Stephen Andrew White received consecutive prison terms for murder and a weapon charge.
GREENWOOD, S.C. — The day Stephen Andrew White was scheduled for trial instead became the day he admitted murder and received a 40-year prison sentence for killing Erin Lee Thomas outside a Laurens County courthouse.
White pleaded guilty Monday, April 20, to murder and possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime. Circuit Judge Frank R. Addy Jr. imposed 35 years for murder and a consecutive five-year sentence for the weapon offense. The plea spared the court a trial over the Aug. 12, 2024, killing but left the judge to weigh a violent record that prosecutors said was clear.
The state’s account placed the shooting at the end of a child custody hearing, not during a confrontation inside the courtroom. White, Thomas and White’s wife had been present for the hearing at the Laurens County Courthouse. When it ended, the parties separated. Prosecutors said White left his attorney in the parking lot, entered his vehicle and then used it as a weapon, driving into Thomas as Thomas stood beside his own vehicle. The impact left Thomas on the ground with a broken leg and pelvis.
What followed became the center of the plea hearing. Prosecutors said White got out of the vehicle with a gun, stood over Thomas and tried to fire. The weapon misfired and jammed. White cleared it, loaded another round and shot Thomas in the head. Law enforcement officers arrived quickly after reports of shots fired around 3:15 p.m. White threw down the firearm and surrendered. Thomas was given aid and airlifted, but he later died at Greenville Memorial Hospital.
The sentence was announced by 8th Circuit Solicitor David M. Stumbo, whose office prosecuted the case with Deputy Solicitor Jared Simmons and Assistant Solicitor Mary-Madison Driggers. Stumbo said the courthouse setting made the crime especially severe because the violence followed a proceeding meant to settle a family dispute. He said the killing took place in an area where court workers, lawyers, families and law enforcement officers move each day. No other victim was reported shot in the incident.
White’s lawyer, Public Defender Chelsea McNeill, asked the court to see the case through the lens of a man who had raised a child he later learned was not biologically his. She said White was an Army veteran and told the judge that “something inside him snapped.” Her remarks described the paternity discovery as a deep personal wound. The defense also said White’s wife had acknowledged an earlier affair with Thomas before the marriage and that White had stayed in the relationship after learning of it.
Prosecutors drew a different line through the same family history. They said White knew about the child’s paternity roughly a year before Thomas was killed, undercutting any claim that the shooting happened in the first shock of discovery. They also pointed to the sequence in the parking lot: first the vehicle strike, then the gun, then the jam, then the second attempt that killed Thomas. In the state’s view, each step showed White still had moments to stop but instead continued the attack.
The victim was 34-year-old Erin Lee Thomas of Woodruff. The Laurens County Coroner’s Office identified him after the shooting, and early sheriff’s office statements said the courthouse was secured after the attack. The first public details described wrecked vehicles, medical response and a suspect taken into custody without incident. The case then moved through the criminal court system until White’s guilty plea nearly 20 months later. By then, the charge had become a murder case with a firearm offense attached.
Thomas’ grandmother, Kay McMahan Trotter, spoke at sentencing about Thomas as a father. She said fatherhood was not just a label for him and that he had given financial help to White and White’s wife so his daughter could live in a good home. Her statement turned the hearing toward the child at the center of the custody dispute. Trotter said Thomas deserved thanks, not violence. The court heard those remarks before the judge imposed the 40-year term.
The guilty plea resolved questions of criminal responsibility but did not erase the family consequences. Stumbo said White’s act removed two father figures from the child’s life: Thomas through death and White through prison. The remark captured the outcome of a case built around paternity, custody and the courthouse steps where a private dispute became a public killing. White’s sentence now runs through the state prison system, with the weapon term following the murder term.
The criminal case stands closed at the trial court level after the April 20 plea and sentence. White received credit for time already served, but the judgment requires decades in prison. Any further court action would come through later post-conviction filings, not through a trial over the killing itself.
Author note: Last updated May 10, 2026.