Jesse Osborne

Jesse Osborne
Jesse Osborne is the 16-year-old perpetrator of the shooting at Townville Elementary School on September 28, 2016. Osborne, who was 14 at the time of the incident, shot his father, Jeffrey Osborne, at their family home in South Carolina before driving his father's truck to Townville Elementary School. Two people, including 6-year-old student Jacob Hall, were ultimately killed, and a total of 3 others sustained non-fatal injuries.

The Shooting
During the early afternoon hours, sometime prior to 1:45 p.m., on September 28, 2016, Jesse Osborne drove his father's black pickup truck into a fence outside of Townville Elementary School located in Townville, South Carolina. Osborne exited the truck and began firing the .40-caliber pistol he had brought with him into the air near the school's playground. According to witnesses, Osborne had repeatedly shouted "I hate my life!" whilst simultaneously firing the weapon. After firing rounds into the air, the 14-year-old perpetrator then hopped the fence leading to the playground, where children were actively playing, and begun to fire at the students.

At 1:44 p.m., law enforcement received a phone call informing them of the active shooting. The shooting officially ended at 2:00 p.m. when Osborne was apprehended by a volunteer firefighter. Osborne claims that his gun had jammed approximately twelve seconds after he had begun in the playground and, had it not, would have continued to fire rounds. The deceased body of Jeffrey Osborne was later discovered by Jesse's paternal grandmother after having received an "unintelligible" phone call from the suspect.

Motive
Osborne confided during his official interrogation that he had been part of an Instagram group with other aspiring murderers, who would openly conspire plans of perpetrating shootings and who were aware of Jesse's own plans to do so. Osborne also claimed that the officers would "see a lot a bunch of Columbine and stuff like that on my Instagram page". He confessed that, upon graduating the fourth grade and transitioning to the fifth grade, he had endured bullying and was even arrested whilst attending West Oak High School in Westminster, South Carolina, for bringing both a hatchet and a machete with him to school, out of anger stemming from the physical bullying he reportedly endured. After the West Oak incident, Osborne was home-schooled and claimed that it, in turn, had caused him to feel isolated. The suspect disclosed that he could not recall any counts of bullying during his time at Townville Elementary School, however, and revealed that he held no animosity towards any of the students attending Townville at the time of the incident, apart from his disclosed grudge against the school itself.

Murder of Jeffrey Osborne
47-year-old Jeffrey Osborne was shot three times with a pre-loaded gun sometime subsequent to 11:30 a.m. on September 28, 2016 by his son. According to the perpetrator, Jeffrey had left for either the post office or the tax office at around 11:00-11:30 a.m. Upon his return to the family's home, Jesse claims that his father was angry over not getting paid. Not long after, the 14-year-old fired a total of three rounds at Jeffrey. According to Jesse his motive for the murder of his father was "whenever he got home, started fussing at me again, I was like, this is it". After committing the patricide, Osborne said that he "freaked out", ran upstairs, embraced his animals, and donned the air-soft vest he would wear whilst perpetrating the attack on Townville Elementary.

Prior to his murder, Jeffrey Osborne had been convicted on multiple charges including domestic abuse, possession of marijuana, and bankruptcy. Although there are no known instances of physical abuse between Jeffrey Osborne and his son, Jesse claims that, the night before his rampage, Jeffrey Osborne had gotten drunk and was "fussing to me and my mom about not getting paid enough for his chicken houses. And he was getting up in my face and stuff. And whenever he's drunk, he always, like, says he wants to fight me because I always make this face to him. And he'll -- and then my mom will have to step in and get fussed at too. And last night he was just worse than he's ever been. He was just drinking" (Jesse Osborne, during his police interrogation).

Sentencing
As of September 6, 2018, Jesse Osborne has plead guilty on charges of two counts of murder and three counts of attempted murder, along with additional charges of the shooting of another student, the injury of a third pupil and the injury of Townville Elementary School teacher Meghan Hollingsworth, who sustained a gunshot wound to her shoulder. A February 2018 waiver concluded that Osborne will be trialed as an adult. If convicted, Jesse Osborne can face between thirty years to life in prison.

Victims

 * Jacob Hall, 6. Jacob Hall sustained fatal injuries to his leg. Hall fell into cardiac arrest and underwent surgery at Greenville Memorial Hospital, but succumbed to his wounds on Saturday, October 1st, at 12:56 p.m., three days after the events at Townville. On October 5th, a funeral was held for Hall.


 * Jeffrey Osborne, 47. Jeffrey Osborne was found dead at the family's home by Jesse's paternal grandmother after receiving an unintelligible phone call from her grandson. Funeral services for Osborne were held on Sunday, October 1st.

Non-Fatal Injuries

 * Meghan Hollingsworth. Meghan Hollingsworth sustained a non-fatal injury to her should amidst her attempt to protect from students from rounds of gunfire. Hollingsworth was treated at AnMed Health Medical Center in Anderson, South Carolina.
 * Unidentified child. Another child, an unidentified student from Townville, sustained a non-fatal injury to the foot. The student was also treated at AnMed Health.