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All eight suspects are in custody after a brutal attack in Five Points early Monday morning which left the teenage victim in critical condition, according to Columbia police.
Columbia Police Department spokeswoman Jennifer Timmons said 19-year-old Thyeem Henrey was charged with assault and battery by mob in the 2nd degree, common law robbery, and criminal conspiracy. He's expected to appear in court Friday afternoon.
The other seven suspects are all juveniles, according to Timmons. Their names cannot be released.
Police Chief Randy Scott said the 18-year-old victim, later identified as Carter Strange, was jogging through a parking lot near the intersection of Blossom Street and Saluda Avenue just after midnight on Monday when the assault happened. "This teenager was minding his own business, trying to make his curfew when he was brutally attacked and robbed," said Scott.
Strange's mother, Vicki, said her son was headed home after visiting a friend slightly past his midnight curfew. "At 12:07 he wasn't home, I called him and said 'Carter where are you?'" recounted Vicki. "He said 'Momma, I'm almost home. I'll be there in just a minute.' At 12:15 I called, but the phone was dead."
Timmons said surveillance video taken in the area shows four of the suspects running towards Carter, though police only released video of the suspects walking on Harden Street. Investigators believe the suspects assaulted Carter and stole his cell phone before leaving him in the parking lot.
After the assault, Scott said Carter managed to make it a block down the road to Edisto Avenue, where a passerby found him two hours later and called 9-1-1. Carter was taken to a local hospital, where he is still in critical condition.
Vicki said she rushed to the hospital and found a son she could barely recognize. "I literally bent over him; I recognized his hand and his hair, and I said 'that's my son,'" Vicki told WIS News 10.
Carter's family told police the beating was so severe he required emergency surgery to remove a brain clot. He's also expected to need reconstructive surgery on his face. "He did nothing to them," said Vicki. "They didn't know him, they didn't know the kind of person he was, they don't know the kind of man he's grown up to be and they don't know the lives he's touched. But they thought he was so less of a person, they thought this would be okay."
Carter's family told WIS News 10 he recently graduated from Dreher High School. "As a parent, you don't want to see your kids hurt," said Carter's father, John Strange. "I'd give anything to trade places with him that night and now."
"We got lucky he didn't die," said Vicki. "Next person won't be lucky. If they did this now, what's to stop them from doing it again?"
Timmons said most of the suspects turned themselves in with their parents after the surveillance footage was shown on the news.
Section 16-3-210 of the South Carolina Code of Laws defines lynching as an attack on one person by two or more people. Police haven't said whether lynching charges will be filed.