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Brian Sessoms, 24, was shot to death inside a Summerville home on New Year's Eve after he climbed through a second-floor window and came down the stairs toward three women who were inside, according to authorities.

Deputies said Sessoms had been living in the house on Buckthorn Circle for at least two weeks, and possibly as long as two months, but had been told to leave and warned that he would be shot if he came back. He returned drunk, banged on the outside of the home and rang the doorbell before scaling an air-conditioning unit to reach an upstairs window, sheriff's reports said.

Once inside, Sessoms chased some of the women down the stairs, where Joseph Harriott, 25, a friend who lived there, met him, authorities said. Harriott shot him in the chest, stomach and elbow with a .380-caliber handgun. "I shot Sessoms because he was trying to get to the girls," Harriott told deputies, according to the Berkeley County Sheriff's Office.

A 911 call placed during the disturbance described Sessoms as drunk and in a violent rage, beating and dragging people inside the house, according to dispatch recordings later reviewed by prosecutors. Efforts to revive him failed, and he died the following morning.

On Jan. 4, 2008, 9th Circuit Solicitor Scarlett Wilson announced that Harriott would not be charged. She said his actions were covered by South Carolina's Castle Doctrine, which allows a person to use deadly force against someone who unlawfully enters a home and poses an imminent threat.

Sessoms' relatives disputed the finding. His aunt, Regina Sessoms, said the family believed he was "murdered in cold blood" and questioned how the shooting could be self-defense "against someone who was unarmed."