Police seek 2 in shootings

Say incidents might be acts of retaliation

Authorities think a shooting at the Ashley Shores community early Wednesday spawned two retaliatory shootings within the next few hours.

On Friday, North Charleston police announced one arrest in the case and said they were looking for two other men. Martez Brown and Benjamin Goss, both 24, were wanted on charges of assault and battery with intent to kill, a release says.

Officers had responded to 3800 Ashley Shores Drive near Azalea Drive around 3 a.m. Wednesday to find a man with a gunshot wound in the back, Spencer Pryor, police public information officer, wrote in a release.

Brian Lenard Ancrum, 18, of West Ashley was taken to Medical University Hospital, which had no information to release on his condition.

Officers later met with a second man, 18-year-old Deontray Bellman, at Bon Secours St. Francis Hospital where he was being treated for a gunshot wound to the left arm, the release says.

Police officers served Bellman with a warrant in the shooting after agents from the Department of Probation, Parole and Pardon Services arrested him on a probation violation.

He was being held on $50,000 bail Friday at the Charleston County jail.

Witnesses reported to police that they saw three or four men armed with handguns and a rifle exiting a white four-door automobile and start firing toward of Ancrum and others.

Officers found the automobile described by witnesses at Bellman's house, where they also found an AK-47 rifle in a bedroom closet.

Within two hours, multiple gunshots were fired at two houses.

One house on Gary Drive in the Waylyn neighborhood was thought to be associated with Brown and another on Orchid Avenue in the adjacent Brentwood neighborhood with Goss. No one in either house was wounded.

Investigators do not think a shooting that wounded a man on Helm Avenue on Thursday night was connected, Pryor said.

Reach Noah Haglund at nhaglund@postandcourier.com or 937-5550.