Hastings Arthur Wise (February 16, 1954 – November 4, 2005) was a convicted American mass murderer who was executed in the U.S. state of South Carolina for killing four former co-workers. Sometimes erroneously referred to by the press as "Arthur Hastings Wise," he was known simply as Hastings Wise to the people he worked with. Wise shot and killed Charles Griffeth, David Moore, Leonard Filyaw, and Sheryl Wood on September 15, 1997, at the lawn mower parts manufacturing factory of his former employer, R.E. Phelon Company, in Aiken, South Carolina. Crime Hastings Wise was an ex-convict who had served prison time for bank robbery and receipt of stolen goods before obtaining a technical degree and, eventually, finding employment at R.E. Phelon. He had no criminal convictions for the approximately fifteen years between his release from prison and the murders of 1997. According to his pastor, in eleven years, he had "hardly ever" missed a week of Sunday services. The motive for the murders was Wise's termination of employment with the factory following a confrontation with a supervisor eleven weeks earlier. Wise had worked there as a machine operator for more than four years until his firing in July 1997. After his dismissal, Wise told co-workers he would "be back." Testimony was presented at trial that he had felt discriminated against for his African-American race all his life. The jobs he wanted were given to white employees by a white personnel director. Wise killed the director, and three other white workers as well. On September 15, the day of the murders, Hastings Wise drove into the Phelon employee parking lot for a scheduled meeting to pick up a box of personal items from Stanley Vance, a security guard. Instead, he shot Vance in the chest with a semi-automatic pistol. Wise tore out the guard station's phone lines and told Vance, "I got things to do." Vance survived his injuries. Wise then entered the main building, first going to the personnel office, where he fatally shot Charles Griffeth, the man who had fired him, twice in the back. Griffeth was 56 years old. The next victims were in the tool and die area. He fired rapidly, killing David Wayne Moore, 30, and Ernest Leonard Filyaw, 31. Two other people were injured in this area. According to news reports, both Moore and Filyaw were engaged to be married at the time of their