6 months later, pizza delivery driver’s killing still a mystery
By Bobby Bryant, Editor, editor@newsandpress.net
Abdul McKenzie is still alive on Facebook.
His page is still up on the social network. His last post was Jan. 21. He had just seen the Bruce Willis/Samuel L. Jackson thriller “Glass.”
He liked it. “Mind blown,” he wrote.
Five days later, McKenzie, 39, was shot dead on a rural road on a cold Saturday night while delivering pizzas for the Darlington Domino’s at 510 Pearl St., where he’d worked for almost 20 years, mostly as a delivery driver.
Six months later, the Jan. 26 slaying remains unsolved despite an ongoing investigation by the Darlington County Sheriff’s Office and the posting of a $7,500 reward by Domino’s corporate office. Friends and family are growing impatient for a resolution of what officials called the “senseless” slaying of a well-known and well-liked local man.
In a May 9 e-mail to the News & Press, the victim’s brother, Eric McKenzie of Columbia, said the Sheriff’s Office seemed to be making little progress toward an arrest.
“We’ve heard multiple ‘leads’ since my brother’s passing, but my perception is nothing is concrete,” he wrote.
“I don’t know how many ‘We’re hoping to bring some people in this week’ I can continue to hear before I lose hope.”
In a February e-mail to the newspaper, McKenzie wrote: “They’ve just been asking us to be patient and give them time.”
Lt. Robert Kilgo, spokesman for the Darlington County Sheriff’s Office, said the department could not say anything publicly about the investigation.
“Any information we release would assist potential defendants in their effort to create false testimony, conceal evidence and elude capture,” he said.
Abdul McKenzie was found dead in his car on Rogers Road near Larry’s Drive, an area of mostly fields and forests, south of the Darlington city limits.
There apparently were no witnesses to the slaying and no nearby surveillance cameras that could have picked up anything.
“What a great guy he truly was,” Eric McKenzie said of his brother.
“All of his friends and I have so many selfless stories about him. (He) was a true hero to a lot of people.”
Anyone with information about the case is asked to contact the Sheriff’s Office at (843) 398-4501 or CrimeStoppers of the Pee Dee at 1-888-CRIME-SC.