Screams for help can be heard on tape
By TARA JENNINGS Ledger Staff Writer tara@gaffneyledger.com

Police were able to match evidence and DNA at the scene of the shooting in November with DNA evidence from a series of rapes which occurred in Gaffney between Dec. 6 and 13.

The blood-curdling cries of a woman begging for help and repeatedly saying she's going to die can clearly be heard on a 9-1-1 tape.

Less than a month later, police charged Jonathan Leon Byers, 18, of 201 First St., Gaffney, with assault and battery with intent to kill for the shooting. Byers also was charged with three counts each of 1st-degree criminal sexual conduct and 1st-degree burglary for the rapes of three Gaffney women in their homes.

In the 9-1-1 tape, obtained by The Ledger through a Freedom of Information Act request, the 30-year-old victim tells dispatchers she has been shot in the back by a young black man.

The shooting victim says she had sex with the shooter and tells dispatchers he didn't want to pay for it.

Police said they believe Byers picked the shooting victim up on 4th Street and drove her to Coyle Hill Road, where she lived.

The woman said her attacker couldn't operate the stick shift of the vehicle he was driving and wrecked into a ditch.

"He pulled the gun on me and when he did, I tried to get out and he shot me," she said. "I pulled for the gun. I got the clip out of it but that was it. He ran off down the road."

The woman was left in the ditch, and the vehicle, which police later determined to be stolen, abandoned.

She also told dispatchers she had a condom with the assailant's semen in it that she saved for DNA evidence.

During the 9-1-1 call, the woman tells dispatchers she was shot between the shoulder blades and cries that she cannot feel her legs.

The woman survived the attack.