Squires pointed gun at teenagers on Hilton Head Island
By Delayna Earley
The Island News
Former Master Sgt. William “Billy” Squires, 41, was arrested early on Tuesday, Oct. 28, and charged by the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) for repeatedly pointing his gun at a group of four teenage boys while off duty and intoxicated on Hilton Head Island in September.
His neighbor, Brian Stahlheber, who also lives in the Squiresgate subdivision where the incident took place, was arrested as well.
Squires, who has since been fired from his job as a Beaufort County Sheriff’s deputy, was charged with aggravated breach of peace, which is a misdemeanor, and four counts of pointing and presenting firearms at a person, which according to South Carolina law, is a felony and could be punishable with up to five years in prison.
Stahlheber was charged on Tuesday with two misdemeanors, giving false information to law enforcement and breach of peace.
Both men were under the influence of alcohol during the incident, according to the release sent out by SLED.
SLED was responsible for investigating the Sept. 28 incident and Squires’ actions when he violently confronted the four teenage boys as they were walking through the neighborhood.
According to SLED documents, Squires said he believed they had a gun and told them to get on the ground and several of his neighbors joined in to help restrain the boys.
No gun was ever found in the boys’ possession.
Squires was released with a $40,000 cash bond for the four charges of pointing and presenting the firearms and a $25,000 personal recognizance bond for the aggravated breach of peace charge.
A defendant can be released from jail without having to pay the bail amount with a personal recognizance bond if they agree to appear at all future court dates and to comply with the conditions set by the judge.
Stahlheber was given a $65,000 personal recognizance bond for giving false information to law enforcement and a $25,000 cash bond for aggravated breach of peace.
Both men are prohibited from possessing firearms and have been ordered not to contact the four victims in the case.
Additionally, both men were recently named as defendants in a civil lawsuit brought against them by the mother of one of the teenage boys who was part of that incident.
In the arrest documents released by SLED, several new details were revealed.
One of the defendants, Stahlheber, had apparently been wearing a pair of Ray-Ban Meta smartglasses that captured video of the incident and has not been published yet.
He can be seen wearing the glasses in a previously published video of him riding on a four-wheeler while questioning the teenagers.
According to the documents, following that interaction, he spoke with Squires and told him that he thought that the teens had a gun.
Per the affidavit, there was no criminal conduct observed from the teens.
At this point, Squires drives up to the teenagers in his undercover, department-issued white truck, asked them what they were doing in the neighborhood and told them they had to leave when they said they were just walking and asked him to leave them alone.
This is when he left and went inside of his house and put on his Sheriff’s deputy vest and his gun and returned to where the boys were still walking and demanded for them to get on the ground with his gun drawn.
The published videos all show the same scene. The boys were visibly and audibly terrified and were screaming for their moms, and for help and for someone to call the police – at which time Squires finally identifies himself and says, “I am the police.”
The affidavit states that he “escalated the situation” by pointing his gun at the teens without “reasonable basis or legal justification.”
While this is all happening, at some point Stahlheber can be seen walking angrily toward the group of boys screaming for them to get down and, per the affidavit, he restrained one of the boys by applying choking pressure.
At the scene he said that he saw the teenagers with a handgun magazine, but later he admitted to police that he never saw a weapon or extended magazine but only assumed that there was one based off of the “posturing of the teen[s].”
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.
