After a family trip to Myrtle Beach for Fourth of July festivities and shark tooth hunting with her son, the last place Staci Wilson expected to find herself was beside her husband Josh as he fought for his life in a hospital room with four bullet wounds.
“Where I want to be is with my husband,” said Staci Wilson, who lives in Parkersburg, West Virginia. “I was supposed to spend the rest of my life with him, not nine months.”
The Wilsons married on Oct. 16, 2021, after being together for six years.
“He never failed to show me how much [he loved me],” she said. “Always leaving little notes hidden for me to find, bringing me gifts, and just spending time with us.”
Josh Wilson was rushed to the Grand Strand Medical Center in the early hours of July 6 after being shot while driving. After he was wounded, he crashed near Broadway Street in Myrtle Beach, according to police reports.
“He got flown to [the Medical University of South Carolina] on July 8 and passed on July 10, a day before my birthday and only nine days after his 40th birthday,” Staci Wilson said.
Quentin Ahmad Jean, a Florida native living in Horry County, has been charged with Josh Wilson’s murder.
During Jean’s Oct. 20 bond hearing, prosecutor Mary-Ellen Walter said that city cameras captured Jean, who was 35 at the time, firing shots from the vehicle he was driving into the vehicle Josh Wilson was driving on July 6.
“City cameras then show the victim's car driving along the street following the flow of traffic [and] the defendant driving against the proper flow of traffic, so the wrong way down the lane, so that he is traveling right next to the victim's car,” Walter said during the hearing. “You can see sort of, according to the police report, flashes that appear to be gunfire. Eventually when they recover the victim's car, there are seven gunshots into the car.”
Staci Wilson said she, her husband and their son left West Virginia and drove to Myrtle Beach on July 4 to see the fireworks on the beach.
“We got there late and we walked on the beach and I didn’t realize how late it was until my son was like, ‘I’m tired,’ and so we went to the hotel and slept in on [July 5] then we went back to the beach after we ate and we stayed on the beach while my son and Josh were looking for shark teeth,” Staci Wilson said. “My son swore up and down that he could find some, so they made a bet that if he found some that Josh would give him $10 and he found some and Josh didn’t find any.”
By the time her family was ready to eat dinner that night, Staci Wilson said it was already around 10:30 p.m. So once they had eaten and were ready to return to the hotel, it was past midnight.
“It was close to 12:30 when we got to this gas station, a Circle K on 3rd Avenue, I believe and while [Josh Wilson] was inside getting cigarettes, me and my son was outside and it was a cool night, so we left the windows down and just turned the air conditioning off to save gas and when [Josh Wilson] came back out, a guy was talking to him in front of our car. He was on a bicycle and he was saying, ‘Do you have a cigarette I could get?’”
Josh Wilson gave the man on the bicycle a cigarette then the man asked him for a ride and, according to Staci Wilson, Josh Wilson told the man that he would give him a ride after taking his wife and son back to the hotel.
“‘I'll be back in 10 minutes,’ he said to him, so we left the gas station and he took us back to the hotel,” Staci Wilson said. “He told me that he would be right back, that he was just gonna go back and give that guy a ride and I just told him, ‘Be careful. I love you,’ and he left.”
Walter, during Jean’s bond hearing, said that Josh Wilson could be seen on camera returning to the gas station and picking up “the unknown man on the bicycle.”
As they drove off, Walter said that Jean could be seen on camera following the car that Josh Wilson was driving. The two cars are then seen on camera pulling up to the parking area of Jean’s apartment.
Walter said that after the unknown person on the bicycle exited the car, that Josh Wilson then drove away and was followed by Jean. Shortly thereafter, city cameras captured Jean driving against the flow of traffic and firing shots at Josh Wilson.
Jean was arrested by Myrtle Beach police on July 11 and was charged with murder and possession of a weapon during a violent crime, according to an arrest report.
Walter said that an initial gunshot residue test on Jean came back positive and that another gunshot residue test was still being processed at the time of the bond hearing.
Jean’s attorney, Eric Fox, spoke during the bond hearing, saying that the footage of the shooting does not show clearly whether shots were fired from Josh Wilson’s vehicle into Quentin Jean’s vehicle. Fox also said that a handgun was found on the floorboard of the car Josh Wilson was driving along with a “tan powdery substance.”
Jean could not be reached for comment.
Fox declined to discuss the case and said that there are no hearings nor a trial scheduled for Jean at this time.
Jean was granted a surety bond set at $75,000 and is prohibited from contacting the Wilson family.
“He died from his wounds on Sunday morning, July 10, and he never regained consciousness, so I never got to say goodbye to him,” Staci Wilson said at the bond hearing. “From our point of view, Mr. Jean’s request for bond should be denied.”
She received a notification from VINE, a service that updates involved persons on custody statuses, that Jean was released from custody on Oct. 22.
“I spoke from my heart and it didn’t even matter,” she said. “I’m feeling let down. There’s no justice so far and I’m not feeling hopeful for anything later on either, but I am not going to stop fighting for him.”
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