MARLBORO COUNTY, SC (WJZY) — Shanda Nash admits she was angry. She admits she was loud. She also admits taking part in a “heated argument” with her roommate on Feb. 2, 2021 inside the home they rented on Palmetto Street in Bennettsville.
The women were in one another’s face, each shouting their point to the other, Nash said.
What Nash said she didn’t expect was to end up with her back against the floor with Marlboro County Deputy Probate Judge Tammy Bullock standing over her pointing a gun at her head threatening to kill her.
“And she had the gun right to my face and was like, ‘I’ll f—ing shoot you, Shanda,’ Nash said during an interview at her Bennettsville home on August 31. By the time we got in touch with Shanda Nash on August 25, more than six months had passed since she said Deputy Probate Judge Tammy Bullock stuck a pistol in her face and threatened to kill her.
The women became roommates around October 2020, according to Nash, but Bullock had once lived in the home with an ex-boyfriend. When that relationship ended, Bullock rented half the home to Nash and Nash’s 17-year-old daughter, she said.
The argument that morning started over Nash’s daughter after she said Bullock went into her daughter’s bedroom to “get onto her” about not having a job.
“That’s what started the argument was my daughter because she (Bullock) stepped in and she was trying to discipline my daughter,” Nash told FOX 46 Chief Investigator Jody Barr, “And like I told her, if you have something to say to my daughter, come to me. We can discuss it and I’ll discuss it with my daughter.”
Nash said the argument never got physical and never escalated above a shouting match. Bullock, though, went back into her room shut the door. “We’re arguing, and it got heated. She slammed the door, and I heard her mirror break and I was like, ‘What in the hell are you doing?’ And she came out the room and she had the gun,” Nash said.
“When she opened up her door, she had the gun in her hand already and that’s when I went back and that’s when I fell and she was standing right above me and had it like right to my face and I looked up at her and she was saying, ‘I will f—ing shoot you, Shanda,’” Nash said in the interview.
Nash said the gun was so close to the side of her head she could barely see the barrel opening. Nash said she thought about her daughter as she lay on the floor and what might happen if the gun fired, “I think she could have pulled that trigger in the moment. If I would have made any kind of quick movement or like tried to grab the gun or anything, I think she would have pulled the trigger,” Nash said.
Bennettsville Police Department records show Nash didn’t report the incident until three days later. Nash said she considered calling 911 that morning but waited to file the report because she thought she and her daughter would end up homeless if she went through with a police response.
A few days later Nash called the Bennettsville Police Department to report what happened. The department released the report to FOX 46 on August 25.
The report shows both Nash and Bullock were interviewed by Bennettsville police. Bullock admitted to investigators she had a gun in her hand when she walked out of her bedroom door during the argument, but denied pointing it at Nash, “The subject (Bullock) stated that upon exiting her bedroom, the complainant (Nash) proceeded to jump in her face again while engaged in a fighting stance,” Corporal Katrina Brigman wrote in her report.
“The subject stated she never pointed her handgun at the complainant at any time,” Brigman continued.
Bullock told the investigator that she had two guns and only one would fit into her purse, so she carried the second gun out of the room. “I got a gun in my hand. I will not fight you. I am too old, but I will defend myself,” Bullock is quoted in the report as stating to Nash as Bullock walked out of her bedroom to leave for her office at the Marlboro County Courthouse.
We asked Bullock multiple times for an interview, but she would not respond to any of our inquiries.
This gallery contains the written requests for interviews sent to Marlboro County Deputy Probate Judge Tammy Bullock’s county email account and her cell phone during both our Final Disrespects investigation and our investigation into the gun charge allegations. Bullock never responded to our attempts to reach her by phone, or our attempts to speak with her in person at the courthouse.
There was no video or audio recordings of the encounter, but the report noted that Nash’s daughter was in the home when the argument happened. The report shows Nash, and her daughter went to the police department for a recorded interview.
The investigator wrote in the report that Bullock was also interviewed the same day. Both interviews were recorded, but the Bennettsville Police Department declined to release the recordings until the case is closed.
On Feb. 5, two days after the interviews, the Bennettsville Police Department charged Bullock with pointing and presenting a firearm. The department charged Bullock under the city’s pointing and presenting ordinance, which is a misdemeanor, and a conviction could carry up to 30 days in jail and a $500 fine.
Marlboro County Deputy Probate Judge Tammy Bullock uses her cell phone to photograph FOX 46 Chief Investigator Jody Barr outside the front door of the county courthouse on Sept. 24, 2021. Bullock would not respond to multiple requests seeking comment sent to her in August and September 2021. (WJZY Photo/Jody Barr)
Had the Bennettsville Police Department charged Bullock under the state’s pointing and presenting statute, Bullock would have faced a felony charge and potential penalties of up to five years in prison, if convicted. The city ordinance carries a lesser potential sentence and keeps the prosecution out of the Marlboro County Courthouse and inside the city’s municipal court.
The day Bullock was charged, Bennettsville police officers escorted Nash to Bullock’s home to stand by as she retrieved her property. Bullock had already bagged Nash’s property up and had it waiting for her, according to Nash. Nash was not evicted and believed leaving Bullock’s home was the best option at the time.
“I advised Ms. Nash not to return back to the residence,” Corporal Brigman wrote in a supplemental police report dated Feb. 5. Nash told FOX 46 she spent the next two weeks living in her car.
Aside from one conversation with the investigator in the case, Nash said she has not received any communication from the Bennettsville Police Department about her case. The department will prosecute the case against Bullock. Nash told FOX 46 the city wouldn’t turn over any f the records in her case to her so she could prepare for trial.
This page of the Bennettsville Police Department’s incident report shows Marlboro County Deputy Probate Judge Tammy Bullock’s version of what happened on Feb. 3, 2021, which includes her admission she had a gun in hand when she walked out of her bedroom during the argument with Shanda Nash, but that she never pointed it at Nash. (Source: Bennettsville Police Department)
“I have asked and asked for the charging ticket also and they told me that I could get the police report, but that would be all I could get,” Nash said of her attempts to gather the public records connected to her case. She searched for any records showing whether Bullock was ever charged – including a mugshot and booking information from the county jail – but Nash said she never found evidence any of those records existed.
“They didn’t have a charging document or anything,” Nash said in the August interview with FOX 46.
Nash had not seen any of the records until we handed her a copy of the police report and Bullock’s charging documents during our interview, “I didn’t even know this existed,” Nash said while thumbing through the four-page incident report and Bullock’s summons. The one call she had with her investigator was to inform her that Bullock requested a jury trial, and the trial was being delayed until November.
Nash found that out in April and said she never heard another word from the police department.
“Really, I didn’t think it would do any good to report it. I didn’t think they would do anything to her if I did, “Nash said, “Like I said, nothing really came of it, so that’s why I was hesitant to do it in the first place.”
The reason Nash could not find any booking information from the jail is simple: Tammy Bullock was never arrested. The city charged Bullock using a South Carolina Uniform Traffic Ticket; the same ticket issued for speeding and minor traffic violations in the state. The ticket did not require a warrant to be issued for Bullock’s arrest, which means Bullock was only required to show up for court.
In our review of the ticket, Bennettsville police made and error in the “arrest date.” Although seemingly a small detail, it could have placed the Bullock prosecution in jeopardy. We contacted the police department on Oct. 5 to question the error and the department immediately responded.
“We are in the process of reviewing the dates and times on the summons that was issued. And we will make any necessary corrections that reflect accurately the arrest date and I will not allow that to act as a reason for a dismissal of any sort,” Bennettsville Police Chief Kevin Miller told FOX 46.
The chief’s office emailed a copy of the Bullock charging document with the corrected dates.
Nash denies threatening Bullock and plans to go to court to testify against her former roommate, “I just don’t think it’s right; you can pull a gun in someone’s face and not have no kind of consequence whatsoever. If I was to do that to someone I’d be in jail,” Nash said, “They would have took me to jail that day and I would have got charged and probably still going to court for it or in jail for it.”
Bullock will be tried in the Bennettsville municipal court. Her trial date is currently set for Nov. 16, 2021. We will continue to follow the prosecution and update our reporting.
