A 26-year-old man has been charged in connection with the March 20 shooting that killed Charles Boyd Moore Jr., 54, of West Columbia. 

Patrick David Esparza, also of West Columbia, has been charged with murder, according to a release from the Lexington County Sheriff's Department. He was arrested on Friday on an unrelated weapons charge then was later charged in connection with the March 20 shooting that killed Moore. 

Moore was first discovered bleeding and knocking on doors in West Columbia on Friday asking for help. Lexington County Coroner Margaret Fisher said he later died at a nearby hospital from a gunshot wound to the upper body. 

Esparza, according to investigators, had allegedly left the scene and went to a home on Grove Street. There, he is said to have hid the gun which investigators believe was used in the shooting.

“Early in their investigation, detectives identified Esparza as a person of interest in Mr. Moore’s death because the two had been seen together just hours before Mr. Moore was shot to death at a home on Hammond Avenue,” Lexington County Sheriff Jay Koon said in a press release. "This was a crime that involved multiple locations, some of them within the city of West Columbia. ... We’re grateful to the West Columbia Police Department for working with us in the early phases of this investigation.”

Hammond Avenue is near the Walmart Supercenter on Augusta Road.

Esparza remains in the Lexington County Detention Center after he was denied bond on Tuesday afternoon.