Kevin Johns, along with Kim Johns and Kathy Bowling, speaks about when their son, Jared Johns, died by suicide because of a prison-run sextortion scheme during a news conference outside Broad River Correctional Institution on Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2024. (Skylar Laird/Staff)
COLUMBIA — Jared Johns thought he was receiving phone calls from the angry father of a 17-year-old girl who he had been messaging on a dating website.
What the 24-year-old Army veteran and father of two didn’t know was that it was a scam, and the man on the other end of that call was already behind bars.
“To most, this may sound a little fishy, but to a PTSD sufferer, it was a literal death sentence,” his father, Kevin Johns, said during a Tuesday news conference.
Jared Johns died by suicide Sept. 11, 2018.
A law celebrated Tuesday with a ceremonial signing is meant to help prevent similar deaths by stopping crimes committed with cellphones from behind the razor wire of the state’s prisons, Gov. Henry McMaster and other officials said.