Background: The Walmart located on Whiskey Road in Aiken, South Carolina (Google Maps). Inset left: Stephen Foreman (South Carolina Department of Corrections). Inset right: Ashton Rickard (GoFundMe).
A man will spend decades behind bars for shooting a 13-year-old girl at a South Carolina Walmart in what was described as a random act of violence.
Stephen Foreman, 35, has been sentenced to 28 years in prison with long-term mental health treatment at the South Carolina Department of Corrections, court records reviewed by Law&Crime show. He was also sentenced to five years for possession of a weapon during a violent crime.
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Foreman had pleaded guilty but mentally ill to attempted murder in the shooting of Ashton Rickard.
According to a civil lawsuit filed against Foreman by Ashley Rickard, the teenager's mother, on June 7, 2023, the mother and daughter were shopping at the Walmart on Whiskey Road in Aiken, South Carolina. At some point, Foreman approached them and "without provocation," shot the girl with a Colt 1911.
The .45 caliber bullet "tore through" Ashton's body, lodging near the lower back section of her spine and "causing extensive damage to several internal organs and bones." The shooting also caused "substantial blood loss" and other injuries, per the lawsuit filed in April 2024.
Ashton "remained conscious during the attack and the aftermath, fully aware of the seriousness of her injuries," her mom said. According to a GoFundMe set up for the child by her grandmother, she "was shot by a complete stranger."
The civil lawsuit was also filed against Stephanie Foreman, Stephen Foreman's mother, and it was her Colt handgun that the since-condemned defendant used in the attack, per the lawsuit obtained by Augusta, Georgia-based CBS affiliate WRDW. Ashley Rickard maintained in the filing that Stephanie Foreman "unreasonably entrusted or unreasonably failed to secure" the gun.
But it wasn't just that. The mother of the injured child held that Stephanie Foreman knew her son had a history of mental illness. During one 2019 incident in particular, Stephen Foreman reportedly used a sawed-off shotgun "to assault and hold hostage her, his father, and brother in their home, forcing his brother to tie their family up with black tape."
He then "broke into his brother's gun safe and took several handguns from the home," before driving away, the lawsuit continues. After he surrendered to police the next day, Stephanie Foreman initially helped officers "only later to refuse to cooperate and testify truthfully about the events," preventing the man from being "appropriately punished for his violent crime," Ashley Rickard said.
The civil lawsuit is seeking damages against Stephen Foreman and Stephanie Foreman. According to WRDW, as of Wednesday, the lawsuit was temporarily paused.
