The South Carolina mother who watched 16-year-old Trey Wright gasp for breath as he lay dying outside her rural home has described his tragic final moments – and says she believes jealousy sparked the fatal love triangle shooting.
Alicia Lauderback, 31, was caring for the teen – a close family friend – in her mobile home in Johnsonville with her four kids, when he was gunned down during a late-night confrontation with a group of teenagers on June 24.
‘I saw Trey lying in the road. He was gasping, trying to talk,’ she told Daily Mail on Tuesday. ‘He was still alive when we got to him.
‘We were all praying he’d make it. We did everything we could. But he didn’t. His last words to us were: “I’m going to sleep now”.’
Trey, a Johnsonville High School sophomore and football player, was shot twice in the chest by a 19-year-old suspect in the rural, swampy outpost called the ‘Neck’ about 50 miles and a world away from the glossy resort town of Myrtle Beach.
His killing was allegedly caught on tape by one of the teenagers at the scene who filmed it with his phone, police have said.
Trey’s family, friends and police say he was lured to his death by his girlfriend of only a few weeks, Gianna Kistenmacher, 17, and another man she was also involved with, Devan Raper, 19 both of whom live in the Myrtle Beach area.
Trey had only known Raper since the spring when he met him at the beach. Raper, from Conway, had introduced him to Kistenmacher a few weeks before his murder, sources told Daily Mail.
It’s unclear, family and friends said, how what seemed to be a low-key love triangle could result in murder.
Raper was arrested and charged with murder the following day, along with Kistenmacher, who was charged as an accessory before the fact.
Raper is being held without bond; while Kistenmacher was released on bond to home confinement.
Seven other teenagers have been arrested in connection with Trey’s murder – and now, a tenth teen is expected to surrender to police, according to local reports.
Lauderback claimed Kistenmacher led Raper and a carload of friends into Johnsonville from Myrtle Beach the night of the shooting.
Her stepdaughter Jasmine said Trey knew Raper was en route to the home and that a showdown was planned, but the family said he thought it would take the form of a physical fight.
‘Gianna came first in her car, and they followed right behind her,’ Jasmine told Daily Mail Tuesday. ‘We didn’t realize until later that she was part of this and she probably set it up.’
Moments later, gunfire rang out. Lauderback and her husband Jerry were asleep in their home and jumped out of bed to see what had happened.
Jerry tried to administer CPR but Trey was barely conscious, Lauderback said.
She said he was bleeding from two shots to his left chest area and blood was also coming out of his arm.
Lauderback and Jasmine both said Kistenmacher appeared to be as shocked by Trey’s murder as they were and even went to the hospital with them to check on him – although he had been pronounced dead once he arrived.
‘She fooled all of us,’ Lauderback said. ‘She seemed more public with Trey, but then you realize she was stringing both along. In my heart, I feel like she set it up – and she has to live with that.’
Lauderback said the neighborhood kids – including her own son Jayden, 14, who considered Trey like a brother – blame both Raper and Kistenmacher.
‘If they had made better choices, Trey would still be here,’ she said.
Video circulating among teens in the area, she added, showed Raper waving a gun at Trey over the phone days before the shooting.
Jasmine said she knew Kistenmacher only slightly and had heard that Raper had introduced Trey to her because he was no longer that interested in her.
Lauderback said her impression was that Kistenmacher came to see Trey in Johnsonville on the ‘down low’ on evenings and weekdays as kind of a booty call – and saw Raper when they were together in the Myrtle Beach area.
Jasmine said she believes the shooting was fueled by jealousy and bravado.
‘I just think it was all a big jealousy act,’ she said.
‘Devan was trying to act like a bad boy. Maybe that flies at the beach, but down here everybody knows everybody. Nobody overpowers anyone else.’
Many who live in the area, much of which is somewhat rundown, call themselves ‘Neck Gators’ and are well-known for being fierce, carrying weapons, and not being afraid to fight.
Lauderback and others from the area told Daily Mail that residents of the ‘Neck’ are very tight-knit and call each other family ‘even if we’re not all blood kin’.
But the killing has left the Neck Gators stunned.
‘It’s horrible. Everything’s different now,’ Lauderback said. ‘We miss Trey and his big heart.’
Trey, who is originally from Johnsonville, was just weeks away from starting his sophomore year – which is why he was living with Lauderback and her family, after his mother moved out of town, she said.
Trey’s father did show up at the hospital after his son’s death but has otherwise ‘always been out of the picture,’ Jasmine said.
His mother, Ashley Lindsey, has remarried and has another child and lives in an even more rural area of Florence County.
She said Trey wanted to stay in Johnsonville and go to the high school here, she said.
‘He was at football practice all summer,’ Lauderback said. ‘He had his whole life ahead of him.’
In contrast to the crowded mobile home where Trey lived with Lauderback, her husband and their kids, and many animals in Johnsonville, Kistenmacher’s family is listed as living in the posh double security-gated Surfside Beach Club community just outside Myrtle Beach where homes sell for upwards of a million dollars.
It is here that Gianna is believed to be staying under house arrest.
‘I don’t know if they were picking on Trey because he lives out here or not,’ Lauderback said. ‘But I kind of wondered about it.’
Both Alicia and Jasmine Lauderback said Trey had told them that he felt he wasn’t ‘good enough’ for Kistenmacher. Jasmine said she believed Trey had really fallen for her.
‘He wasn’t the real fighter type,’ Jasmine said. ‘He wouldn’t have put himself out there like that if he didn’t care about that girl. There’s no way he thought something like this would happen.’
Florence County Sheriff T.J. Joye earlier said the shooting was believed to have been caused by a romantic rivalry.
‘They had issues with each other, and it was over a female,’ Joye told local media.
‘The sad thing is, you got a 16-year-old who lost his life. You’ve got a 19-year-old who is going to be in jail the rest of his life. Over what?’