Fugitive Jeroid Price returned to SC

COLUMBIA, S.C. (WCBD) – A convicted murderer who went on the run after being released early from prison was returned to South Carolina Monday.

Jeroid Price was found guilty of fatally shooting college football player Carl Smalls Jr. in 2002. He was sentenced to 35 years in prison, but was released early on March 19, 2023.

Just over a month after his release, the South Carolina Supreme Court overturned the order reducing his sentence, but Price was nowhere to be found.

He evaded law enforcement until he was located July 12 in the Bronx, New York.

South Carolina Department of Corrections (SCDC) and South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) agents traveled to New York to retrieve Price from Rikers Island’s West Facility and brought him back to South Carolina.

Price is being held “in a single cell in SCDC’s most secure unit” at Kirkland Reception and Evaluation Center in Columbia, according to a joint SCDC-SLED press release.

Officials are working to determine “the best maximum-security prison for him to spend the remainder of his sentence.”