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HomeNewsMan with the Knife: The Real Killer in Hephzibah's Street Fight

Man with the Knife: The Real Killer in Hephzibah’s Street Fight

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Harris RepeatTen people are charged with murder in the stabbing death of Demajhay Bell after an Hephzibah street fight, but only this man was holding the knife that actually killed the teenage victim, authorities say.

Demetrius Lamont Harris just celebrated his 21st birthday last month, but he didn’t grow up much. This criminal has been causing problems for Richmond County since he was a young boy. (That’s him in a collection of five RCSO mugshots.)

At age 17, Demetrius was caught hanging out in front of Pinnacle Place Apartments in Hephzibah with a .380-caliber pistol sticking out of his jacket pocket. After he was arrested on two weapons charges, prosecutors dropped one of them in return for his guilty plea on the other. Judge Patricia W. Booker slapped him on the wrist with a year of probation and 40 hours of community service.

The judge was nice, too. Because even while Demetrius was awaiting trial on those weapons charges, he was getting in more trouble. A month after he was found with the pistol, he got arrested again for interfering with a sheriff’s deputy, giving him his second mugshot as a teenager.

fight photoA year later, he got picked up on a grand jury arrest warrant and a Superior Court bench warrant, both felonies. Nothing ever became of those, from what we can tell. In 2015, he was back in jail again on a magistrate court bench warrant.

And then came last Friday. Demetrius armed himself with a knife on Chaps Lane in south Augusta as a fight between his 15-year-old sister and another young couple escalated into a deadly street fight, authorities say. A witness video shows Harris throwing the knife around as baseball bats come flying near him and a car jumps the curb into the yard.

BellAfter Demetrius allegedly slices open the neck of Bell (who is pictured here), he took a baseball bat to the left arm,  which shattered his arm and sent him to the hospital in excruciating pain.

Demetrius was eventually arrested for murder in the death when Bell died two days later. Demetrius has company in jail, though. Authorities have arrested 10 people for participating in the senseless fight.

Perhaps, if Demetrius had learned his lesson as a teenager, he could have done the right thing and called law enforcement. What do you think?

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10 Charged with Murder in Deadly Hephzibah Fight

Video of street fight and murder is available by clicking here: https://youtu.be/dkDyM7nKvH4 . Warning: Some of the video is disturbing.

 

 

 

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Greg Rickabaugh
Greg Rickabaugh
Greg Rickabaugh is an award-winning crime reporter in the Augusta-Aiken area with experience writing for The Augusta Chronicle, The Augusta Press and serving as publisher of The Jail Report. Rickabaugh is a 1994 graduate of the University of South Carolina and has appeared on several crime documentaries on the Investigation Discovery channel.
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