HORRY COUNTY, S.C. (WBTW) — A Myrtle Beach traffic court judge claimed she was threatened and attacked after her house was broken into last month, according to a Horry County police report obtained by News13.
The aggravated assault was filed by Brana Williams against her soon to be ex-husband. Her ex-husband, James B. Arnold, is also the retired Isle of Palms Police Chief. Arnold has since taken his life.
The house on Chapel Ridge Circle, near Saint James High School, is just one of the properties Arnold and Williams lived at before Williams told him she wanted to separate and moved out. This is also the house where Arnold took his own life.
Williams and her boyfriend, Brian Shives, reflected on the fight.
“I fell asleep, and thank God I did, because he was, I mean, of what happened,” Shives said. “He didn’t know I was in the house. He came in to kill her and everyone in the house. He told some people this thing, this stuff.”
Arnold broke into Williams’ house at about 2 a.m. on May 28, according to the report. Williams said she and Arnold were married for 23 years before filing for divorce just months ago.
Together they adopted six kids, who are all under the age of 20.
Shives says they met when Williams took one of her daughters to the tattoo place he worked at. He claims at the time, Williams had already moved out of her house with Arnold. However, a family member said differently.
Shives described how he confronted Arnold the night he broke into her house.
“I saw, she had two younger sons that had a hold of his arms, and I see the gun so, I jumped over . . . jumped up and stuck my finger behind the trigger,” he said.
According to the report, Arnold tried to enter Williams’ bedroom when a fight broke out. Shives said Arnold had a gun in his hand that he was trying to get ahold of.
“He punched me about six or seven times trying to get me off,” Shives said. “So, I got the magazine of it, and when he saw that, he was trying to hit me in the chest, to make the gun go off. He cut my chest up pretty good.”
Shives said he has a couple cuts on his chest from the gun, and Williams was punched once when trying to get away from Arnold, but the kids are OK.
Shives said he had to bite Arnold’s finger for him to let go and leave the house.
“On the way out I told him, ‘listen, you know you’re going to prison and you’re a cop,” Shives said. “I said ‘what’s going to happen to you?’ It’s like realization came across his face and he ran out the door.”
Shives said when Arnold left Williams’ house, he was being chased by police officers. He said Arnold pulled into the driveway of his house on Chapel Ridge Circle and shot himself.
On Thursday, News 13 got reaction from one of Arnold’s family members as well as a neighbor.
One of the relatives confirmed Judge Williams and Former police chief Arnold adopted children together but says Arnold also had two biological children.
This family member says issues between the two led to plans for a separation in early May.
He says the couple’s problems came to head on May 28th, 2024, after one of Arnold’s daughters told him she felt uncomfortable when Shives made an inappropriate comment to her.
The relative says he wasn’t at William’s house the night of the fight but heard about it from one of the children.
“He left the house and then you know, obviously she called 911 and when he left, the cops, like I said since he lived so close to the house, they were right down the road, and they followed h7im to the house and he pulled in the driveway. And a couple of seconds later, I’d say like 20 or 30 seconds later, he you know committed suicide.”
One of couple’s neighbors, Jake McPherson, says he grew up playing with their children.
“It’s crazy and I feel really bad for the kids. They don’t deserve that, they came from a messed-up family as it is and it’s just, it’s not good for them at all. I just feel bad for them, and they don’t deserve that,” McPherson says.
Williams posted about a service for Arnold on Facebook, which happened four days after his death.