A Beaufort County sheriff’s deputy and his girlfriend are both facing charges after a gun went off at their apartment complex earlier this month — and a week later, officials still won’t say who pulled the trigger.
Deputy Evan Lee Sigelnski, 23, was arrested Oct. 2 along with girlfriend Kierstin M. Griffith, 22, after an off-duty domestic incident at the Hanover Park complex on New Hanover Street in Beaufort. Sigelnski is charged with third-degree domestic violence. Griffith caught the heavier end: first-degree domestic violence plus a weapons charge — possession of a weapon during a violent crime. Police say someone was hospitalized. Nobody in an official position has said who that was, or who was holding the gun when it fired.
Sigelnski has been a deputy for roughly a year — local coverage has called him a rookie. The sheriff’s office suspended him without naming him at first, then confirmed he’s on paid administrative leave while an internal investigation runs alongside the criminal case. Both he and Griffith bonded out of the Beaufort County Detention Center the next morning.
The arrest records tell the basic story the press releases won’t: booking photos obtained from the county’s inmate roster show both in orange jumpsuits, booked about two hours apart on the night of Oct. 2, released within hours of each other the next day.
The open question is the whole story: one shot fired, one person hurt, two people charged — and a sheriff’s office investigating itself right alongside the prosecution. Suspension before conviction, paychecks that don’t stop, and an internal-affairs file nobody outside the building gets to read. The standard playbook, running exactly as written.
If authorities ever answer who pulled the trigger, this story gets a second chapter. Until then, the record shows a deputy in his first year on the job, a girlfriend facing a felony, and a badge that survives on administrative leave.
