By Delayna Earley
The Island News
A second arrest has been made in the March 3 shooting death of 6-year-old Frankie Washington at Cross Creek Apartments in Beaufort.
Desarai Bennett, 22, has been charged as an accessory to the reported accidental shooting.
On March 3, police were called to the Cross Creek Apartment complex responding to a child with a gunshot wound.
Washington, who had suffered a gunshot wound to the head, was transported to an area hospital with his critical injury.
According to his obituary, Washington died at Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, S.C.
Bennett was arrested and charged on Tuesday, March 19 with filing a false police report of a felony, criminal conspiracy and accessory before the fact to a violent felony.
Three days prior to Bennett’s arrest, St. Helena resident Benjamin Shamar Seabrook IV, 18, was also arrested and faces charges related to the shooting.
Seabrook faces charges of involuntary manslaughter, obstruction of justice, unlawful conduct toward a child, tampering with physical evidence or biological material and filing a false police report.
Bennett had no criminal record prior to her arrest on Tuesday, but Seabrook faces charges for a February 2024 arrest for felony assault and battery, possession of a weapon during a violent crime and carjacking.
Seabrook was arrested on February 3 for those charges and was released later that day on a $50,000 surety bond.
He bonded out again with a $20,000 surety bond for the each of the initial five charges, three days following his March 15 arrest for Washington’s shooting.
According to court documents, a sixth charge, criminal conspiracy, was added to his list of charges on March 20.
Delayna Earley, who joined The Island News in 2022, formerly worked as a photojournalist for The Island Packet/The Beaufort Gazette, as well as newspapers in Indiana and Virginia. She can be reached at delayna.theislandnews@gmail.com.
