Aiken police have charged a North Augusta drug dealer in a 2022 murder, an arrest that falls on the one-year anniversary of the victim’s shooting death.
Repeat offender Freddie Lee Simpkins, 34, was spotted by officers Wednesday sitting on the front porch of a home along Carolina Springs Drive in North Augusta. He ran before being captured in a brief foot chase.
Simpkins is linked to the May 3, 2022, shooting death of Charles L. Bradley, an Aiken father with six sons and one daughter.
The victim’s body was discovered on Hampton Avenue in a Nissan sedan after gunfire was heard throughout Crosland Park.
Another suspect, 24-year-old Javon Croft, is also charged in the killing. He was arrested last summer.
Simpkins is also connected to a shooting the weekend before the murder in which a victim was shot several times in broad daylight while walking down York Street near Edgefield Avenue, leading to attempted murder charges.
Last month, Simpkins evaded Aiken police when they spotted him. They searched the car that he was in and found 2.7 grams of heroin and 29 Oxycodone pills.
At the time of the murder, Simpkins had unserved warrants for dealing drugs in 2020. The warrants accuse him of dealing cocaine, Ecstasy and marijuana. Police said they found 266 Ecstasy pills along with a quantity of cocaine and marijuana, and they tied it to him.
The suspect is a repeat offender with previous convictions for drugs, burglary, and fleeing police. As a teenager, Simpkins was charged with assaulting a school employee, but that charge was later dropped.
The ATF RAGE Unit Task Force, Aiken County Sheriff’s Office, and North Augusta Department of Public Safety assisted in Wednesday’s apprehension of Simpkins.
