Mother of four shot, killed at off-site bakery
Kelly Hunnewell was on her way to becoming the manager of a new location for Carolina Cafe when she was shot and killed July 1 during an early morning shift at the off-site bakery for the cafe.
“She started part-time, and then ended up just knocking it dead here. Her position just developed over time because she was just so ambitious and good at what she did,” Carolina Cafe owner Lauren Schleuter said. “What she made, she spent on her kids. She was the type of person that pulled herself up by her own bootstraps.”
Hunnewell, a 33-year-old mother of four, was killed when three men tried to rob a club nearby, but moved to the bakery once they realized the club was closed, according to interim police chief Ruben Santiago. No money was kept at the bakery.
The case sparked outrage when it was revealed that Hunnewell’s alleged killers, who the police said are also known gang members, were out on bond for previous violent crimes when they attempted to rob her. That’s when South Carolina state Sen. Katrina Shealy, R-Lexington, started planning a march to the State House, with help from Hunnewell’s family and friends, for Saturday starting at 9 a.m. She said she hopes to use the event to push for reform in the process of assigning bail to violent criminals.
“Four young children are now without their mother, and all she was doing was going to work,” Shealy said. “Two of these men who murdered her were out on bond because our judicial system let them back out, and they were out on bond for previous violent crimes. They shouldn’t have been on the street in the first place.”
Schleuter, who has primarily been promoting the rally with flyers and social media, said she and her employees at Carolina Cafe were devastated by Hunnewell’s death.
“I think everybody understands that you have your family family and then you have your work family, because you spend 40, 50 hours a week with the people that you work with. She was family,” Schleuter said. “We got very attached to her and her children because she was trying so hard to make a better life for them.”
But Schleuter said planning the rally has helped the Carolina Cafe family, at least somewhat, to cope with Hunnewell’s death.
“When a tragedy happens, the good in humanity and the good in people come out,” Schleuter said. “We had such an outpouring of support and caring and grieving and mourning from our customers and from people that know us here, that it spread to ‘What can we do? What can we do to get this not to go away, and to bring attention to the fact that these guys were already out after being arrested on numerous violent crime charges?’”
Finding the upside to a tragedy like Hunnewell’s death is difficult, Schleuter said, but that’s what she and her employees have been focusing on for the past month.
“The good, I think, is going to be the focus on changing the way the judicial system and the bonding works,” Schleuter said. “So that’s kind of my new soapbox.”
Shealy said the crime reflects on ongoing problems in the state’s judicial system.
“This happens over and over and over again,” she said. “I think we give too much priority to criminals and not to the victims. We worry about criminals’ rights and not victims’ rights. Had they been off the street, it probably wouldn’t have happened, or maybe it wouldn’t have happened. I think that’s what we need to focus on.”
Current state law allows judges to deny bond to violent repeat offenders, but Shealy said the problem is that some judges aren’t using that option.
“I want the judicial system to enforce the laws that are already there,” Shealy said. “(The judges) have the power because we’ve already given them the power … They don’t have to give them bond now. It’s in their hands. The judicial system is responsible for releasing these people.”
Shealy and other organizers are asking participants to meet at the corner of Pendleton and Sumter streets, across the street from Carolina Cafe, at 9 a.m. Saturday to begin the march to the Statehouse steps. They’ll be passing out 500 bakers’ aprons to marchers to wear in support of Hunnewell’s family, and everyone is encouraged to bring signs, Shealy said.
Former Richland County sheriff’s deputy Chandra Cleveland-Jennings and the parents of Carter Strange, the then-teenage victim of a 2011 beating in Five Points, will speak at the rally, which will take place on the Statehouse steps.
Shealy said family members of victims of similar crimes will also be allowed to speak if they wish. South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson, Columbia Mayor Steve Benjamin and Columbia law enforcement officers have also been invited to attend the rally.