Pickens attorney was avid fisherman, Clemson fan

By John Boyanoski  

FEBRUARY 4, 2010 6:51 p.m. (0)

Incident Report

The man who killed J. Redmond Coyle Wednesday night was under court order to sell his house as part of a divorce settlement.

Coyle represented the ex-wife, court records show.

Jerry Dean Crenshaw shot Coyle in the head shortly after 5 p.m. with a 9-millimeter handgun, Pickens City Police Chief Tommy Ellenburg said.

The shooting took place in the parking area behind Coyle's Main Street office in Pickens. Crenshaw then shot himself in the head.

Coyle and his wife, Freda, were leaving the law office just after 5 p.m. Wednesday and had just walked down the stairs leading from a wooden porch when a man approached and fired at Coyle. The Coyles' daughter Noelle Coyle witnessed the shooting and as police arrived, she was yelling, “that the man had shot her daddy,” the incident report states.

Crenshaw had parked his vehicle within sight of the backdoor.

Last Friday, Crenshaw was ordered to sell the house and 7.6 acres and to give his ex-wife, June Elizabeth Crenshaw, now Cater, at least $50,286 from that sale.

The divorce proceedings began in Pickens County Family Court in November 2007. Cater claimed Crenshaw had committed adultery. Judge Alvin Johnson heard the case in April 2007. Crenshaw did not attend the hearing saying he was a pallbearer at a cousin’s funeral in Tennessee. He asked through his attorney, Scott Dover, to delay the hearing.

Johnson denied the request, saying Crenshaw could have made it back on time. Johnson ruled in May 2009 that the couple split everything equally and that the house and land at 420 Martin School Road be sold within four months.

Last November, Cater asked the court to require Crenshaw to sell the property. That court record quotes Crenshaw as telling her, "Everything is fine right where it's at and it is not going to be sold."

As part of the divorce settlement, 22 heads of cattle, three of 10 horses and a 1983 Corvette were sold, court records show.

Crenshaw retired as an electrician from BASF in 2007 and is a former National Guardsman. He was 61.

Cater worked at Cannon Memorial in the wellness center and retired in 2007.

One officer, Sgt. Patrick Sandor, who was off-duty and did not have a weapon, was in another part of the lot to pick up his wife from work when he saw the man pull a gun. He was unable to get there before the gunman fired.

Two more officers, Matt Ward and Matthew Brannan, were on Main Street when Sandor called them on the phone. One of them ran down a small embankment and then turned right into the unnamed alleyway leading into the lot, while the other drove his patrol car in.

The officers said they saw Coyle face down on the ground and Crenshaw about 10 feet to his left. One of the officers saw that Crenshaw was still breathing and handcuffed him. When they rolled him over, they found a cocked and loaded handgun.

Ellenburg said officers then did a sweep of the area. They found a handwritten note in Chenshaw’s car saying he planned to harm Coyle. Pickens County deputies went to Crenshaw’s house, a one-story, brick ranch style located on a hill about 300 yards from the road. Several horses were in the field.

Deputies found evidence that suggested Crenshaw planned to take his own life, Ellenburg said, but would not elaborate further.

Ellenburg said Crenshaw had made no previous threats toward Coyle nor did he make any threats against his ex-wife.

Ellenburg would not say if surveillance cameras in the lot showed the crime. He also said he knew of no prior criminal charges against Crenshaw.

At  a 3 p.m. press conference Thursday at City Hall, a two-story structure about three blocks from the crime scene, Ellenburg said that he just left work when he got a call from a dispatcher about an incident downtown.

He said he called a lieutenant, who picked up his phone and hollered, “ I need you out here, Redmond Coyle has just been shot.”

Ellenburg had known Coyle for most his life. The attorney rented a house from Ellenburg’s family when Ellenburg was a pre-teen, and he lived next door.

“The feeling is hard to believe right now,” he said.

Coyle was described as reserved and a gentlemen who wore crisp suits, sometimes adding a Clemson tiger paw to the lapel. He was a fisherman who had a pontoon boat on Lake Keowee, where he and his wife moved last year.

His office is directly across from the Pickens County Courthouse where the American and South Carolina flags were lowered to half-mast in his honor.

An arrangement of white carnations was left in front of the office by a friend, Sheila Barton, the owner of a neighboring floral and gift shop, Town and Country.

Barton said she had known the Coyles for almost three years. They regularly bought flowers for people they knew, their secretaries, church members and each other. Mrs. Coyle bought numerous orange, purple and white floral arrangements for his 60th birthday party last year.

“He was a good Christian man,” she said.

One of Coyle’s secretaries came in the store Thursday morning. The two hugged and began to cry. The secretary said the family has asked that staff not comment on the case.

Barton also expressed sympathy for the Crenshaws.

“There are two families that have been destroyed,” Barton said.

The lot behind Coyle’s office was marked by police in reddish-orange spray paint to show evidence areas such as where the Coyles’ cars were located. Their spaces are marked with signing bearing their names.

Most people already had gone home for the day Wednesday and learned about the shootings from the frantic calls of friends.

Bobby Hiott, the executive director of Behavioral Health Services of Pickens County, said he was teaching a class in Greenville’s University Center when he got the call from a staff member. He usually sets his cell phone to quiet when teaching and normally won’t pick up. But when the phone kept going off, he decided to check.

“I’ve never experienced someone I know this well suffer violence like this,” Hiott said Thursday from his office two doors down from Coyle’s.

Hiott has known Coyle for more than 20 years and the attorney sat on his agency’s board for the past decade. They often talked about their shared love for Clemson sports and interest in social work. Coyle was not an extravert to the outside world, but his personality changed inside the courtroom.

Coyle was a hard-working attorney who knew how to present cases, Hiott said.

“He was an advocate for his clients,” Hiott said. “As anyone would expect.”

Coyle was a member of Rock Springs Baptist Church in Easley. The Rev. David Gallamore, Rock Springs pastor, said Coyle was a Bible scholar who made many trips to the Holy Land to look for artifacts and study the locations described in the Bible. He spent three weeks there last spring.

Coyle taught a Sunday School class for married couples and had been a member for about eight years. Gallamore said many Sunday School members went to the Coyle home last night to be with Coyle's wife.

Call after call came into the church office this morning from members seeking to do something for the family. Shock and sadness were evident among everyone who came in. One man expressed disbelief at what happened, and Gallamore responded, "We live in a wicked, wicked world."

Pickens City Councilman Tommy Stephens said he used to go to church with Coyle at East Pickens Baptist.

“I thought a lot of him,” he said.

In 1991, Coyle was placed on a committee set up by the former head of the South Carolina Baptist Convention to see if they should seek legal action against Furman University's move to govern itself.

The committee ultimately suggested reconciliation and not a lawsuit in 1992.

Coyle also was the attorney representing hundreds of people arrested for protesting a Laurens Road abortion clinic in the early 1990s. At one point, Coyle sued the city in federal court saying Greenville laws broke constitutional rights about peaceful gatherings.

His lawsuits claimed the people, which included several hundred at a time, were not protesting, but offering peaceful prayer. The suit was eventually dropped, but Greenville leaders redid some of its picketing laws to allow people to gather peacefully.

.

Comments

Add New

Leave a Comment
Comments are moderated and may not be posted immediately.
Name:
Email:	do not notifynotify
Title:
	Please input the anti-spam code that you can read in the image.

3.26 Copyright (C) 2008 Compojoom.com / Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."