‘We’re going to beat up the gay kid’: Teen killed near Murdaugh estate was hate crime victim, lawyer says

Stephen Smith was found found dead on July 8, 2015, on a dark road in Hampton County, S.C., three miles away from his vehicle and near the Murdaugh family estate. In the wake of his death being recently ruled a homicide, his family’s lawyer is giving his theory on what led to Smith’s death, PEOPLE Magazine reported. “When you start going down the possibility that it was a hate crime and they took a rape kit, this is an openly gay 19-year-old kid,” Eric Bland told PEOPLE. “And this isn’t in New York City or California or Washington D.C., Philadelphia. It’s in the Lowcountry, South Carolina, whe…

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