A man has been jailed for life for brutally hacking a driver to death with a machete after he stopped to offer him a ride in the middle of the night.
Rodney Watson, 66, of St. Marys, Georgia , was driving to a store in Burton, South Carolina , in July 2020 when he saw Michael Eugene Goode, 50, stranded by the road, the 14th Circuit Solicitor’s Office said in a news release.
According to authorities, Watson’s niece and a woman who was riding in the front passenger seat recognized Goode, also known as “Slick”, and so the 66-year-old pulled over and gave him a ride.
A short time later in the early hours of Wednesday July 8, Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office deputies were called to reports of a fight in the yard of a mobile home on Horton Drive, Burton.
When they arrived, they found the 50-year-old attacking the woman in the front seat, authorities said.
As Watson tried to stop the attack, Goode stabbed him six times with a 10-inch serrated machete. One of the blows severed an artery on Watson’s left arm, killing him, according to a forensic pathologist.