University student shot dead after trying to enter wrong home
A college student in South Carolina was shot and killed after trying to enter the wrong home, police said.
Nicholas Donofrio, a 20-year-old junior at the University of South Carolina, was pronounced dead at the scene in a residential neighborhood in Columbia early on Saturday morning.
Columbia Police were called to the home on the 500 block of South Holly Street just before 2.00am after reports of an attempted burglary. While they were en route, they received reports of shots fired.
When they arrived, officers found a dead male lying on the house’s front porch with a gunshot wound to the upper chest.
After a preliminary investigation, police determined Donofrio lived on the same street – located about two miles from the University of South Carolina’s campus. Classes for the college’s fall semester had just begun on Thursday.
According to investigators, the college student ‘attempted to enter the wrong home’ before the fatal shooting.
Donofrio was originally from Madison, Connecticut. He originally attended the University of New England before transferring to South Carolina in 2021, Connecticut Insider reported.
The homeowner has not yet been identified, and it is unclear if they will face any charges. The investigation remains ongoing, police said.
South Carolina has a comprehensive ‘stand-your-ground’ law that generally protects shooters who use lethal force in their own homes, according to the Giffords Law Center.
‘The state’s laws also make it harder to properly investigate these cases by limiting law enforcement’s ability to arrest a person who claims to have acted in self defense,’ the anti-gun violence group said.
The shooting comes about four months after the shooting of Ralph Yarl, a 17-year-old Kansas City, Missouri high school student who was shot and injured after arriving at the wrong house to pick up his younger brothers.
Andrew Lester, and 84-year-old homeowner, was eventually arrested and charged with first-degree assault for the shooting.
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