Human remains discovered last month off Hope Road in Fairfield County have been positively identified by the State Law Enforcement Division (SLED) as those of William Ira Pound Jr., the Fairfield County Sheriff’s office said last week. Pound, from Batesburg-Leesville, disappeared in Fairfield County on Nov. 29, 2010. He was 54 at the time of his disappearance.
The skeletal remains were discovered by a timber cutting crew Nov. 17, only a few miles from where Pound’s wrecked car was found in 2010. Fairfield County Coroner Barkley Ramsey said the cause of death was unknown and would be listed as undetermined.
In 2010, Pound’s family told news outlets that he had intended to visit his mother in a Fairfield County nursing home on Nov. 29. The following day, Pound’s car was found wrecked on Old River Road, about 1 mile east of I-77, but a search of the area, aided by thermal image scans of the surroundings, failed to turn up a driver. At the time of the recovery of the vehicle, Pound had not been reported missing, and the car was thought to have been abandoned and was towed from the scene.
Pound’s wife, Sharon Pound, reported him missing to the Lexington County Sheriff’s Office Dec. 11, but it wasn’t until January 2011 that a Ridgeway salvage yard connected Pound’s name to the wrecked vehicle on his lot. A witness later came forward and reported seeing a man matching Pound’s description walking down Hope Road on the day of the accident, approximately 2 miles from where the car was recovered. The witness said the man was missing one shoe and had a towel wrapped around his head, leading investigators to suspect Pound had been injured in the crash. More than 40 volunteers searched an 8-mile area for days following the report, with no luck.