Share and Follow
Background: The Walmart located on Whiskey Road in Aiken, South Carolina (Google Maps). Inset left: Stephen Foreman (South Carolina Department of Corrections). Inset right: Ashton Rickard (GoFundMe).
In a shocking incident at a South Carolina Walmart, a man faces a lengthy prison term for shooting a 13-year-old girl in what authorities have labeled a random act of violence.
Stephen Foreman, aged 35, received a 28-year prison sentence, which includes extended mental health treatment at the South Carolina Department of Corrections, according to court records examined by Law&Crime. Additionally, Foreman was given a five-year sentence for possessing a weapon during a violent crime.
Foreman entered a plea of guilty but mentally ill for the attempted murder of Ashton Rickard.
The teenager’s mother, Ashley Rickard, filed a civil lawsuit against Foreman on June 7, 2023. The lawsuit details that on the day of the incident, Ashley and her daughter Ashton were shopping at the Walmart located on Whiskey Road in Aiken, South Carolina, when Foreman unexpectedly approached them and, “without provocation,” shot the young girl with a Colt 1911 firearm.
The .45 caliber bullet “tore through” Ashton’s body, ultimately embedding itself near her lower spine, resulting in “extensive damage to several internal organs and bones.” The shooting also led to “substantial blood loss” and other serious injuries, as outlined in the lawsuit filed in April 2024.
Ashton “remained conscious during the attack and the aftermath, fully aware of the seriousness of her injuries,” her mom said. According to a GoFundMe set up for the child by her grandmother, she “was shot by a complete stranger.”
The civil lawsuit was also filed against Stephanie Foreman, Stephen Foreman’s mother, and it was her Colt handgun that the since-condemned defendant used in the attack, per the lawsuit obtained by Augusta, Georgia-based CBS affiliate WRDW. Ashley Rickard maintained in the filing that Stephanie Foreman “unreasonably entrusted or unreasonably failed to secure” the gun.
But it wasn’t just that. The mother of the injured child held that Stephanie Foreman knew her son had a history of mental illness. During one 2019 incident in particular, Stephen Foreman reportedly used a sawed-off shotgun “to assault and hold hostage her, his father, and brother in their home, forcing his brother to tie their family up with black tape.”
He then “broke into his brother’s gun safe and took several handguns from the home,” before driving away, the lawsuit continues. After he surrendered to police the next day, Stephanie Foreman initially helped officers “only later to refuse to cooperate and testify truthfully about the events,” preventing the man from being “appropriately punished for his violent crime,” Ashley Rickard said.
The civil lawsuit is seeking damages against Stephen Foreman and Stephanie Foreman. According to WRDW, as of Wednesday, the lawsuit was temporarily paused.