Siblings Accused of Murdering Tow Truck Driver as He Was Repossessing Vehicle

The tow truck lights were still flashing and the driver’s door opened when the first deputy arrived on the scene in the early morning hours of Wednesday, June 12. 

The tow truck door was riddled with bullet holes on the Columbia, S.C., roadside, Jay Weaver of the Richland County Sheriff’s Department tells PEOPLE.

Steve W. Hughes — the 46-year-old tow truck driver from Lexington, S.C. — was slumped inside.

First responders rushed him to the hospital, where he later died of a single gunshot wound, Weaver tells PEOPLE.

The sheriff’s department says investigators believe the motive behind Hughes’s fatal shooting was an attempt to stop him from repossessing a vehicle.

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Raheem De’Angelo Jackson, 20, was booked into Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center later that day, according to his online booking records. He is charged with murder and possession of a firearm during a violent crime, per the sheriff’s department. 

Five days after Raheem’s arrest, in the early morning of Monday, June 17, the sheriff’s Special Response Team and Fugitive Task Force swarmed his younger sister’s residence in an attempt to arrest her and serve a search warrant.

But Essence Taniyah Jackson, 19, was not home. 

Investigators executed the search warrant and ultimately found her at “a secondary location a short time after execution of the search warrant,” the sheriff’s department said in a set of press releases emailed to PEOPLE.

Essence – who was charged with murder and booked into the same Richland County, S.C. detention center as her brother, per her online booking records — is described by officials in the sheriff’s department as a “co-conspirator” who allegedly “contributed to actions that occurred that evening.”

PEOPLE contacted the 5th Circuit Solicitor’s Office for Richland County for information regarding the sibling’s court cases in the early afternoon of Tuesday, June 18.

The clerk did not have records indicating if Raheem had yet entered a plea to the charges, and he had no defense lawyer listed for the case. His second court appearance is set for June 20 at 9 a.m. 

There were no available records connected to his sister based on a search of her first and last name.

The sheriff’s department says the case remains under investigation.