Port Royal police charge suspect after idling car stolen with passenger in the backseat
An Orangeburg man with a lengthy criminal history is behind bars in connection with a car theft and possibly inadvertent kidnapping last summer. The suspect allegedly stole an idling car outside a Port Royal restaurant, crashed less than a mile away and ran from the scene — all while a passenger was in the backseat.
Quantrell Dechane Hills, 33, has been charged with kidnapping, grand larceny and three other minor offenses. He remained in custody at the Beaufort County Detention Center as of Tuesday afternoon.
Hills was arrested after police pulled over his vehicle early on the morning of April 4, according to Port Royal police spokesperson Capt. John Griffith. His arrest warrants were obtained two weeks prior, after investigators identified him as the suspect using forensic evidence found at the crime scene.
On the night of July 13, 2023, Port Royal officers were responding to a single-car accident on Battery Creek Road when they received a stolen vehicle report from Yummy Hibachi and Sushi on Ribaut Road. Speaking with the backseat passenger, officers discovered the stolen vehicle was the same one involved in the crash.
Hills allegedly fled the scene of the collision, leaving the unwitting passenger alone in the backseat. The passenger, who was an employee at the restaurant, told police he had been waiting in the idling car while the driver went into the building. The car thief suddenly got into the vehicle, driving less than a mile before crashing and running away.
Griffith previously said Hills likely did not realize there was a passenger in the car, but he continued to drive after noticing the man in the backseat. Police were still able to apply the felony charge of kidnapping, defined under South Carolina law as the unlawful seizure, confinement or abduction of another person “by any means whatsoever.”
Investigators do not believe Hills was armed during the theft or his arrest, Griffith said.
The car’s passenger was uninjured.
Since 2009, Hills has earned a number of criminal convictions in Orangeburg and Beaufort counties, including first-degree assault and battery, resisting arrest, hit-and-run, forgery, four counts of burglary and three counts of giving false information to law enforcement. He had completed a prison sentence and was released on probation on May 1, 2023, about two months before the alleged car theft in Port Royal.
