A $30 pair of camera glasses helped convict a South Carolina man who was sentenced Wednesday to 35 years behind bars for shooting a police officer four times.
Malcolm Antwan Orr, 29, was found guilty of attempted murder and possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime after a two day trial, according to the Jasper County Sun Times.
The conviction stems from a New Year’s Day incident last year in which Estill Police Officer Quincy Smith responded to a suspicious persons call. When he arrived, he turned on the camera glasses he bought on Amazon and confronted Orr, who ignored the officer.
“Come here,” Smith can be heard saying in the video to Orr, who turned around and walked away, still talking on his cell phone.
Smith follows Orr, who continues to walk away. The officer tells him several times to take his hand out of his pocket, and then threatens to use his Taser. About 40 seconds after stopping to confront him, Orr can be seen pulling a 9 mm handgun from his pocket, pointing it at Smith, and firing.
Several rounds go off, and Smith frantically yells “shots fired” into his radio. Several more rounds are fired and Smith runs back to his squad car. His hands are covered in blood as he pushes buttons on his radio and calls for help.
“Dispatch…I’m hit. I am hit. I am hit in my neck someplace,” he says. “My arms are broken. Help me please.”
Smith sits in his squad and looks around frantically for a while before getting out. A bystander who identifies himself as J. Tompkins can be heard walking up asking if Smith needs anything, telling him he’ll stay there with him. Smith thanked the man and clicked the button on his radio.
“Dispatch, please tell my family I love them,” he said.
“Where are you shot at? Oh my god,” says Tompkins, as Smith appears to be lying on the ground looking up.
Tompkins takes the radio and starts talking with the dispatcher as Smith says it’s getting harder for him to breathe.
“He said he can barely breathe. Y’all please hurry, please hurry with the ambulance,” Tompkins tells dispatch, before reassuring Smith. “Just hold tight man. I am right here with you. I am not going anywhere.”
Emergency responders arrived and Smith survived. Prosecutors said Orr fired eight rounds at Smith, four of which hit the officer.
“If but not for the grace of God and some very good doctors, this would not only have been a murder case, but a death-penalty case,” said 14th Circuit Solicitor Duffie Stone, the prosecutor in the case.
Dr. James Dunne, the emergency room doctor who treated Smith, testified that a bullet severed a vein in Smith’s neck. Another bullet hit him in the torso, and had to be extracted from his back. He was also hit in the arm.
The jury took less than 45 minutes to return a guilty verdict. Circuit Court Judge Roger Young handed down Orr’s sentence, the maximum for the charges against him.
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