10 years after Townville, what did South Carolina learn?

By: Paul Hyde

Outlets: South Carolina Daily Gazette

Published: September 28, 2026

Words: 830

Last Updated: 2 weeks, 6 days ago

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TOWNVILLE — Things like this can’t happen here.

A school shooting can’t happen here. Not in this quiet, tight-knit rural community of rolling fields and roadside vegetable stands. Not in this village (population 3,913) whose history reaches back two centuries to a post office that opened in 1836 and a Presbyterian church founded in 1803, when Thomas Jefferson was president.

But on Sept. 28, 2016, the unthinkable did happen.

A 14-year-old boy, after killing …

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