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.
Goode fled the scene but was tracked down to a nearby home and arrested just hours later.
The 10-inch serrated machete used in the attack (The Fourteenth Circuit Solicitor’s Office)
He claimed his innocence but his trial heard how DNA evidence placed him at the scene with the machete.
Now, more than four years on, following a three-day jury trial at Beaufort County Courthouse, Goode was convicted of Watson’s murder.
He was sentenced to life in prison without parole for murder as well as five years for possession of a deadly weapon during the commission of a violent crime.
Prior to Watson’s killing, Goode had a string of other convictions including possession with intent to distribute crack, assault, battery, criminal domestic violence, resisting arrest, and giving false information.
