James Douglas Drayton, 24, allegedly killed five people inside a home in a small upstate South Carolina town on Sunday.
Then he robbed the Taylor Brother’s Express Store at gunpoint early Monday Morning near Waynesboro, GA. He crashed his car fleeing from Burke County, Georgia, Sheriff’s deputies. He was charged with armed robbery, kidnapping, DUI, and fleeing. Today he was charged with multiple counts of murder.
Police found five males shot in one house. None of them are related. Four were dead at the scene. The fifth died later in surgery.
The victims are Adam Morley, 32, Thomas Anderson, 37, Mark Hewitt, 59, Roman Christean Megael Rocha, 19, and Derek James Baldwin, 49. It is not known what, if any, connection that Drayton has to the victims. Drayton is from Spartanburg.
The quintuple killing has received shocking little media coverage, despite being the largest mass murder in the history of Spartanburg County, SC. It has primarily only been covered in local media.
Drayton has at least three previous mug shots on file. One is from burglarizing a Lexington, South Carolina church and attacking an employee in 2019.
