Two months after the tragic and calculated killing of 16-year-old Trey Wright in a secluded part of South Carolina, his family and friends lay blame on his teenage girlfriend for sparking the incident, though her reasons remain a mystery.

Wright’s mother, Ashley Lindsey, along with his close friend, 18-year-old Ethan Kirby, gave the Daily Mail slightly varying stories regarding the events leading to Wright’s shooting on June 24. However, they both implicated 17-year-old Gianna Kistenmacher, one of nine teenagers from the Myrtle Beach region charged with murder.

Kistenmacher, who had been in a short-term relationship with Wright, was introduced to him by Devan Raper, aged 19, from Conway, South Carolina, whom Wright met during a spring break visit to the beach. Raper is reported to be the shooter.

‘I believe she just wanted them to fight, not for it to end this way,’ Kirby told Daily Mail. ‘It was all a childish act that turned real.’ 

Raper, who faced charges last year for allegedly driving someone else to a scene where a group of teenagers came under gunfire, is currently held without bail at the Florence County Detention Center.

Hunter Kendall, 18, also is being held in jail. The other seven, including Kistenmacher have been released on bond.

According to law enforcement and Wright’s acquaintances, Raper was part of two carloads of teenagers traveling from the beach over an hour’s drive inland to rural Johnsonville, where he allegedly shot Wright and abandoned him on the roadway.

According to some sources familiar with the case, Kistenmacher was behind the wheel when Raper pulled a gun and opened fire.

However, Gianna Kistenmacher’s lawyer, Francis Humphries, contested this version, stating that Gianna was neither driving nor riding in Raper’s vehicle. He opted not to elaborate further.

 

Lindsey said she’d met Kistenmacher with her son several times but dismissed suggestions by the local sheriff that a ‘love triangle’ was at the center of the conflict. 

She and others say the truth is more complicated – a tangle of egos, teenage drama, and escalating bravado that ended with a boy’s life cut short. 

‘My son wasn’t about dumb stuff like a love triangle,’ Lindsey said. ‘He told me just two days before he was killed that being with Gianna felt like a dream come true. 

‘He really liked her, but he might have been clueless to whatever else was going on.’

Lindsey and Kirby accused Gianna of being a type of ‘queen bee’ who had deliberately picked a fight with Trey earlier on the night when he was killed – and involved Raper who was with her at the time just to stir the pot.

Gianna accused Wright of cheating on her even though he was with his cousins on First Neck Road at the time, several sources told the Daily Mail. Raper joined in the argument and at one point pointed a gun at the phone where he, Gianna and Trey were video-calling.

Lindsey said Wright knew that Raper was headed to fight with him after their beef on the phone – but that Wright would have expected a ‘bare knuckle fight, just hands no weapons’.

 Lindsey said nothing adds up for a motive.

 

‘How do you go from s**t talking to killing somebody? ‘she said. ‘When I was growing up, if kids had a problem, they’d meet on a dirt road, fight with their hands, and go home. You didn’t pick up a gun. None of this makes sense. 

Kistenmacher, who is understood to be the daughter of a Horry County police officer, has been charged with murder but has been under house arrest along with 17-year-old Corinne Belviso, another of the nine teens arrested and charged with murder under South Carolina’s ‘the hand of one is the hand of all’ law.

That law holds that if multiple people join in a criminal plan, each can be held responsible for any criminal act committed. No pleas have yet been entered in the case.

Belviso, reached at her home in Myrtle Beach where she is also under house arrest, came to the door and said: ‘Trey was my friend’ but declined to elaborate further. She said she hopes her lawyer can get her off.

The Daily Mail was unable to reach the Kistenmacher family. Alaina Raper, the mother of Devan, slammed the door in a reporter’s face at her home in Conway, South Carolina.

Kirby believes peer pressure and fear played a role in the deadly confrontation.

‘Devan was talking tough from the beach,’ Ethan said. ‘But when they drove an hour to fight, Devan realized Trey wasn’t backing down. 

‘Trey was a great kid but he was a little tough ass too. I once saw him get a fish hook stuck in his hand and he pulled it out without flinching. I think Devan got scared.’

Lindsey said Trey met some of the Myrtle Beach teens during spring break and truck shows, where local kids gather to show off customized ‘squatted’ pickup trucks.

‘Johnsonville is only about 45 minutes from the beach. Kids go there, hang out, and meet people,’ she said. ‘Trey had a truck, and that was something he loved.’

Another friend of Wright who did not want her name used said the squatted truck culture was the backdrop of the friendship between the beach town kids and Trey.

‘Gianna hung around the beach people and the truck scene, she was kind of a truck s**t,’ the friend said. 

‘The popular country boys drive lifted trucks with crazy paint jobs all souped up. They put a lot of time and money into to them and hold truck meets and get awards, I’ve spent plenty of time at truck shows myself.’

She called Raper ‘trigger happy’ and is haunted by the long drive all nine teens made to the site of what would be Trey’s murder.

‘It had to be premeditated as f**k ,’ she said. ‘It’s more than an hour drive. It’s not like (Devan) got mad in the moment.’

To Ethan, Wright’s death still doesn’t feel real.

The two teenagers grew up together, bonded over squatted trucks and spent long shifts working side by side at a local deer-skinning plant.

‘Trey never chilled out, never laid around, never had a lazy day. He was always outgoing,’ Kirby said.

Lindsey said her younger son, 13-year-old Blaze, Trey’s brother, is struggling with the loss.

‘He’s trying as hard as he can, but he’s been having trouble at school and with his feelings,’ Lindsey said. ‘It’s been hard on all of us.’

Wright’s killing comes on the heels of another loss for the family: Lindsey’s brother, Britt McKenzie, was also murdered in 2022. She says her family has clung together through the pain, leaning on one another and close friends.

She recalled the moment she learned of Trey’s death.

‘I was asleep when the phone rang. My mom came to the door screaming, saying Trey had been shot. I beat the ambulance to the hospital. To me, it’s a nightmare nobody would ever want to live.’

Through it all, she wants people to remember Trey for his kindness, his humor, and his love of family. ‘He was everybody’s friend. He loved hard. He loved fishing. He loved making people laugh. That’s who my baby was.’

Lindsey said she’s been upset at reports that Trey was living with friends of the family as if she were neglecting him.

‘I always knew where he was and we talked every day,’ she said. ‘He just liked staying over with his friends and cousins sometimes.’

Ethan Kirby said Lindsey was correct and that country kids often ‘bounce around’ to family and friends and it doesn’t mean they are estranged from their mothers.

‘Family here isn’t always just blood,’ Ethan said. ‘It takes a village.’