Assault trial enters second day

According to an Oconee sheriff’s officer, defendant Clifton Eugene Smith said at the crime scene, “I did it. I’d do it again.” Officer Clay Sheriff testified this morning at the start day of Smith’s second day on trial. He’s charged with assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature. The jury has heard prosecution testimony to indicate that while in a car on Davis Creek Road, an argument between Smith and the victim, Michael Thomas Reid, escalated into a knife incident in which Reid was cut several times and required transport to a trauma center at Greenville. The incident is alleged to have occurred December 26, 2017—as Smith, Reid and Reid’s mother as driver, were headed home from a family Christmas gathering in Central.