On Wednesday, Michael Jayvone Dennis pleaded guilty to opening fire on a Richland County sheriff’s deputy and briefly taking his neighbor hostage at gunpoint following a domestic disturbance, months after he had been mistakenly released from jail without bail.

But despite the likely 25-year sentence for attempted murder, aggravated assault and kidnapping, the scars of that chaotic, afternoon in November 2020 still linger for all involved.

“It just changed my whole life,” said Jennifer Curry, who Dennis held captive. “I have lost two years in five minutes.”

Curry told the court the lingering effects of PTSD have prevented her from sleeping a single night since the incident. Her husband, Jermaine, who she described as her best friend and who disarmed Dennis according to the sheriff’s department, was killed in a car wreck just five days after the attack.

He had stayed up the previous night to comfort Curry, who had been unable to sleep. She says she hasn’t slept since.

“He’s messed my whole entire life up, and he just gets 25 years? That’s it? What am I going to do for the rest of my life?” Curry told the court.

In court, assistant solicitor Kathryn Cavanaugh described how Dennis’ girlfriend called 911 on Nov. 2, 2020, to report that Dennis was outside her house firing a gun.

Richland County sheriff’s deputy Josiah McComb answered the call. But as he responded to the incident off of Bluff Road, Dennis opened fire on McComb’s vehicle with a handgun. When his pistol jammed, Dennis began firing with an AR-15 style rifle, Cavanaugh said.

Acting on what McCombs described as instinct born from training, the deputy returned fire with his handgun, shooting through his windshield before arming himself with a rifle from his patrol vehicle.

Shot in the elbow, Dennis ran next door. Still armed with his rifle, he attempted to take Curry hostage when her husband began hitting Dennis, helping to disarm him, Cavanaugh said.

Dennis’ lawyer, public defender Megan Eigenbrot, said that Dennis “maintained and maintained that he never wanted to cause harm to Mrs. Curry,” who he knew from the neighborhood and believed would “protect him in this situation.”

Eigenbrot described Dennis as having had a troubled childhood growing up in Bluff Estates, where he learned an “animosity to law enforcement.”

At the time of the incident, Dennis had been mistakenly released from jail following an armed robbery of two teenagers. His $75,000 surety bond was incorrectly noted as a personal recognizance bond, allowing him to leave jail without paying, and his ankle monitor had not been activated, according to a lawsuit filed by Curry against Richland County, the sheriff’s department and an electronic monitoring company.

At a press conference following Dennis’ plea, Lott described the incident as an all-too-familiar example of failings in the parole system.

In a lawsuit filed against the Richland County jail and its former health care provider, Wellpath, Dennis argued that he has suffered in his own way since that afternoon. The bullet wound to his right elbow was neglected and ended up requiring surgery. But a few weeks later, Dennis said he developed gangrene in the wound after he was “severely beaten, pepper sprayed, thrown to the ground, and handcuffed behind his back” in the jail.

“I personally hold no animosity towards Mr. Dennis,” deputy McCombs told the court. Still, the “out-of-body of experience” of surviving a hail of gunfire on the job had changed him.

McCombs said that he was still processing the incident. It was a fight, McCombs said, to keep the experience from affecting his family and the way he viewed other people.

“You realize how quickly life can go” McComb said. “My wife is a champion, but ... it changes the way she says goodbye every day.”

Judge Daniel Coble deferred Dennis’ sentencing to the week of May 8. He remains incarcerated at the Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center in Richland County.