On Saturday, August 27, a 42-year-old and a mother of nine children, identified as Kesha Luwan Lucille Tate, was shot by her neighbor while looking out her window in her South Carolina home. Initially, the alleged shooter, Nicholas Skylar Lucas, 30, claimed that the bullet had ricocheted off a fallen satellite dish in his backyard. That claim has been refuted by local authorities.
Lucas was in the habit of shooting rounds at garbage cans and the fallen satellite dish outside his home, with friends, sometimes intoxicated.
Lucas now faces a murder charge after crime scene specialists disproved Lucas’ initial claim that the bullet ricocheted off the dish. Officials determined that the bullet was too clean to have deflected off the target before hitting Tate in the chest. According to the local sheriff’s office, the only way Tate could have been hit was if the shooter had turned in her direction and shot her intentionally.
Over the last couple of weeks since her death, Tate’s family has been trying to cope with the sudden reality of life without their beloved mother, sister, and niece, who they say was the glue that held them together. The family does not want Tate to become one of the many forgotten gun violence victims.
At the bond hearing, Lucas denied intentionally killing the mother of nine, saying it was an unfortunate accident, that it was a confusing situation, and that he had even done some yard work for her.
Tate’s children described a different scenario.
According to her children, Tate had been making dinner that evening, and Lucas and a few friends were shooting targets in his backyard. Tate, standing less than 50 feet from the satellite dish, asked Lucas to stop firing, a few minutes later, Lucas started shooting again, and this time, Tate was shot.
One week after the shooting incident, the window panes on the backdoor were still shattered, and the children’s bicycles remained in the front yard. Despite their best efforts, Manning and Denise Tate, Kesha’s sister, could not get rid of the blood on the carpet, but they cleaned the stains off the wall.
The family is seeking justice for Tate’s death and wants gun laws in South Carolina to change. The family is pushing for a law to make shooting firearms in a residential neighborhood illegal. According to CDC data, South Carolina’s firearm mortality rate ranked ninth in the country.
Cherokee County Sheriff Steve Mueller said that they had not received any reports by residents of Lucas firing his weapon on that property over the past year and that no law exists outlining his behavior as illegal.
According to court records, Lucas had a previous record in North Carolina, where he had been convicted of assault and theft. South Carolina state laws do not allow gun ownership by anyone convicted of burglary, theft, assault, and other crimes of violence that are punishable by imprisonment for more than a year.