RICHLAND COUNTY (WACH) - Richland County investigators have arrested a man in connection with a body found burning in a wooded area last Thursday.
Sheriff Leon Lott says Tristan Gist, 23, was arrested Monday and charged with murder and death or injury of a child in utero due to commission of a violent crime.
Investigators say Gist is accused of shooting 22-year-old Dierra Fisher in the head, driving her body to a wooded area off of Screaming Eagle Road with his two small children in the vehicle and setting her body on fire. Fisher was 21 weeks pregnant.
Lott says this is a horrible act of domestic violence. He says Gist works as a detention officer with Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center.
According to South Carolina Law Enforcement Division records, Gist has a clean criminal record prior to this charge.
Gist was taken to the Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center and later transported to the Lexington County Detention Center.