Tag: south carolina

Jordanian National Ahmad Jamal Khamees Alhendi Identified as Suspect Behind Greenville I-85 Shutdown; Faces Bomb Threat Charges and ICE Detainer

Ahmad Jamal Khamees Alhendi, a Jordanian national, has been identified as the suspect responsible for the hours-long shutdown of Interstate 85 near Greenville, South Carolina.

The chaos unfolded after Alhendi allegedly issued a bomb threat during a routine traffic stop on Thursday, prompting a massive law enforcement response involving SWAT teams, bomb squads, and federal agencies.

The South Carolina Department of Transportation reported severe backups near Exit 44 at White Horse Road as authorities scrambled to address the threat.

Greenville County deputies, along with the State Law Enforcement Division (SLED) bomb squad and the FBI, were deployed to neutralize the potential danger. Governor Henry McMaster confirmed that the shutdown was a precautionary measure taken “out of an abundance of caution.”

“I-85 near mile marker 44 is temporarily closed out of an abundance of caution due to a bomb threat issued during a routine traffic stop this afternoon by SC Transport Police,” Governor McMaster said.

“SCDOT and state law enforcement are on the scene, and normal I-85 traffic will resume once the tractor trailer is swept and cleared by SELD’s bomb squad.”

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Judge in South Carolina Shocks Leftists with Bombshell Ruling: Voter Rolls Are Public Record Under Federal Law

In a landmark ruling, a federal judge in South Carolina has declared that voter rolls are public records and must be made available for inspection by election integrity advocates, a decision that could set a precedent nationwide.

The ruling, issued by Judge Joseph F. Anderson Jr. of the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina, came in response to a lawsuit filed by the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), a nonprofit organization dedicated to election integrity.

PILF sought access to the South Carolina Statewide Voter Registration List under the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) of 1993, which mandates that states maintain accurate voter rolls and make records available for public inspection.

The SEC initially denied the request.

The SEC argued that South Carolina law only permitted access to these records by qualified electors of the state, not by out-of-state organizations like PILF.

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Report: South Carolina Voters Unable to Vote Due to Internet Outage – Voters Told to Put Ballots in ‘Another Slot’

South Carolina primary voters are reportedly unable to vote due to ballot tabulators being unable to connect to the internet.

Real America’s Voice reported Saturday that poll workers are claiming that because the internet is not working, they’ve had to take primary ballots and put them into a separate bin.

Even more unbelievably, vote tabulators are not even supposed to be connected to the internet in the first place, and the media since the 2020 election have denounced claims that they were connected to the internet as baseless conspiracy theories.

According to one voter, a poll worker said “they didn’t have internet” and that he would have to take his paper ballot and “fold it and slide it into another slot. It looked kind of like a trash can.”

“So I walked out scratching my head, and there were a number of other voters that were just as confused as I was,” he told RAV reporter Michelle Backus.

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SOUTH CAROLINA BAN ON PRISONERS’ MEDIA INTERVIEWS VIOLATES FIRST AMENDMENT, LAWSUIT SAYS

South Carolina violates the First Amendment by forbidding incarcerated people from speaking with the press, according to a lawsuit filed today by the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of South Carolina against the state’s Department of Corrections.

“The South Carolina Department of Corrections (“SCDC”) enforces the nation’s most restrictive policy on media access to prisoners,” the complaint says. The suit alleges that the state “bans interviews by anyone, on any topic, and by any real-time means: in person, by video, or by phone. And although correspondence by mail is allowed, publication of a prisoner’s written speech is similarly prohibited.”

According to a copy of the SCDC’s media policy, the agency prohibits “personal contact interviews with any SCDC inmate, untried county safekeeper, or death row inmate by anyone,” and bans “news and non-news media representatives” from taking photographs, or audio or video recordings of SCDC prisoners.

In a press release last summer, the SCDC said, “Inmates in the custody of the S.C. Department of Corrections are not allowed to do interviews.”

“The department believes that victims of crime should not have to see or hear the person who victimized them or their family member on the news,” the press release said. “Inmates lose the privilege of speaking to the news media when they enter SCDC.”

The press release also included a copy of a letter from an SCDC official to the attorney of Richard Murdaugh, a former lawyer convicted of murdering his wife and son. (Murdaugh maintains his innocence.) The letter scolded Murdaugh and his legal team for speaking to the press.

The department’s letter stated that, in violation of the SCDC policy, Murdaugh read excerpts of his journal to his attorney, who recorded Murdaugh’s voice and sent the audio files to the media. Murdaugh received a disciplinary infraction. The letter warned the violation could jeopardize Murdaugh’s access to his attorney.

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Mystery grows after dad and his daughter, six, are found dead near their ‘broken down truck’ in rural SC on the way to grandma’s house – as police probe call where child was screaming moments before family lost contact

Even though a coroner ruled a dad and his six-year-old daughter died of hypothermia, plenty of questions remain how they ended up stranded on the way to grandma’s house and what really happened in their final hours. 

Jason Murph, 42, and his daughter Michelle Murph were heading from Blythewood, South Carolina, to Orangeburg, South Carolina, to visit Jason’s mother – about a 65-mile ride.

Murph’s estranged wife and the young girl’s mother said the last time she heard from them was around 8pm on December 16. 

Murph told her that his car wrecked and he slid off the road and he did not know where he was. The little girl was also heard crying frantically in the background. 

Two days later, Murph’s silver Toyota Tundra was found in a field damaged and burned near Interstate 301 Calhoun County. Around 1pm, officers from the Richland County Sheriff’s Department and police K-9s found their bodies approximately 100 yards away.

A Calhoun County coroner said their autopsy results were inconclusive and the pair died from hypothermia due to the weather elements. Officials said there were no signs of foul play, but their deaths remain a mystery.  

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South Carolina found to violate rights of mentally ill in group homes

A federal investigation determined South Carolina violates the rights of mentally ill adults by placing them in overly restrictive group homes.

Some 2,000 people with serious mental illness were institutionalized in community residential care facilities, or what a report Thursday from the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice calls adult care homes.

The facilities have violated the rights of people with disabilities by limiting their choice and independence while offering few opportunities to engage in the community, the report states.

South Carolina failed to provide community-based services to all residents to divert them from adult care homes, investigators determined. Once a resident is placed in a facility, the state has denied them the resources they need to return to the community.

Some mentally ill residents have remained in the facilities for up to 35 years, the report states. The average resident spends five years in an adult care home.

Kimberly Tissot, president and CEO for Able SC, applauded the Justice Department for investigating what has been a longtime problem.

“We are hopeful this will bring true changes to people with psychiatric disabilities and other disabilities in South Carolina,” Tissot said in an email. “The unjustified segregation the disability community continues to experience in South Carolina must end today.”

Of the more than 400 adult care homes in the state that Tissot said she has evaluated, she found fewer than 15 were “somewhat decent and didn’t violate any rights.”

“CRCF’s conditions are appalling and make things more difficult for someone’s well-being,” Tissot added, using an abbreviation for community residential care facilities.

A spokesman for Governor Henry McMaster did not respond to a request for comment.

The Department of Justice said it launched the probe over a year ago after receiving a complaint. Investigators reviewed documents and conducted dozens of interviews with staff, state officials and residents.

In 1999, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Olmstead v. L.C. that the Americans with Disabilities Act requires that people with disabilities be provided community-based services in the “least restrictive setting” possible. Unnecessary segregation created the assumption that disabled people were “incapable or unworthy of participating in community life,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in the majority opinion.

By housing residents in adult care homes rather than less restrictive settings, investigators determined, South Carolina violated the ADA’s requirements.

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Youth pastor who filmed underaged girls in church bathroom now facing 46 counts

Daniel Kellan Mayfield, the former youth pastor at First Baptist Gowensville in Landrum, South Carolina, who was arrested last month for allegedly recording girls, many of whom were underage, inside the church’s bathroom, is now facing 46 charges of criminal sexual conduct, court records show.

Court records and arrest warrants listed in South Carolina’s public online database show that Mayfield is facing 35 counts of criminal sexual conduct in Greenville County while he is facing an additional 11 counts in Greenwood County.

First Baptist Gowensville did not immediately respond to calls for comment from The Christian Post on Thursday. Early last month, investigators from the Greenville County Sheriff’s Office discovered that Mayfield, 35, had unlawfully filmed multiple girls, as young as 14 years old, inside the bathroom of the church in Landrum. He was previously charged with five counts of first-degree sexual exploitation of a minor and one count of voyeurism.

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21 South Carolina GOP Lawmakers Propose Death Penalty for Women Who Have Abortions

MEMBERS OF THE South Carolina State House are considering a bill that would make a woman who has an abortion in the state eligible for the death penalty. 

The “South Carolina Prenatal Equal Protection Act of 2023” would amend the state’s code of laws, redefining “person” to include a fertilized egg at the point of conception, affording that zygote “equal protection under the homicide laws of the state” — up to and including the ultimate punishment: death.  

The bill was authored by Rep. Rob Harris, a registered nurse and member of the Freedom Caucus; it has attracted 21 co-sponsors to date. (Two former co-sponsors — Rep. Matt Leber and Rep. Kathy Landing — asked to have their names removed as sponsors of the bill. Leber and Landing could not be reached for comment.)  

Rep. Nancy Mace, a Republican who represents South Carolina in the U.S. House, took to the floor on Friday to call attention to the bill, which she sees as part of a “deeply disturbing” trend. (Multiple Texas lawmakers have floated the idea of executing women who have abortions in the past. Those bills, proposed before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, failed.)

“To see this debate go to the dark places, the dark edges, where it has gone on both sides of the aisle, has been deeply disturbing to me as a woman, as a female legislator, as a mom, and as a victim of rape. I was raped as a teenager at the age of 16,” Mace said. “This debate ought to be a bipartisan debate where we balance the rights of women and we balance the right to life. But we aren’t having that conversation here in D.C. We aren’t having that conversation at home. We aren’t having that conversation with fellow state lawmakers.” 

Asked about exceptions for victims of rape, which Mace raised in her remarks on the floor, Harris told Rolling Stone, “There are other bills with exceptions, but will do little or nothing to save the lives of pre-born children.” He went on list exceptions the bill does contain, including: “a ‘duress’ defense for women who are pressured/threatened to have an abortion” and “medical care to save the mother’s life… The functional language in that scenario is whether the baby’s life is forfeited ‘unintentionally’ or ‘intentionally’.” (Asked if he saw any irony between being a member of the so-called “Freedom Caucus” while proposing such harsh restrictions on reproductive freedoms, Harris responded simply: “Murder of the pre-born is harsh.”)

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South Carolina Dem Clyburn Sent Six Figures of Campaign Funds to Relatives

One of Joe Biden’s biggest cheerleaders, South Carolina Democratic Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC), took a page right out of the Biden syndicate playbook and funneled six figures of campaign cash to his son-in-law and grandson.

Clyburn, who has served in Congress for  thirty years, has already endorsed a Joe Biden 2024 run telling CBS News, “I’m all-in for President Biden. I think he’s demonstrated, in these two years … that he is deserving of re-election. And I do believe he will be re-elected irrespective of who the Republicans, they put up.”

Fox News reports:

The longtime congressman’s campaign largesse included forking tens of thousands of dollars over to a company linked to his son-in-law. He also sent nearly $100,000 to his grandson, Federal Election Commission records show.

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Mystery Surrounds Intensifying ‘Earthquake Swarm’ Shaking South Carolina

A swarm of earthquakes rattled South Carolina and appeared to be getting more powerful. About 30 quakes have hit the state this year, and geologists are stumped about what’s causing “earthquake swarms” similar to those felt in Southern California. 

Two earthquakes hit Elgin, South Carolina, on Wednesday. The first was a magnitude 3.5, and the second 3.6, according to data from the United States Geological Survey. A 3.4 magnitude earthquake hit the state days before, while a stronger 3.9 rattled parts of the Georgia-South Carolina border on June 18. 

Wednesday’s earthquakes were the strongest since a magnitude of 4.1 struck the state in 2014. 

South Carolina’s Emergency Management Division shared a video of Wendy Bohon, an earthquake geologist at the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology in Washington D.C., who said about 30 quakes struck in the year’s first half. She said the swarm of quakes is different than others because “there is no mainshock, or a larger earthquake that happens first then there are lots of smaller earthquakes that happen afterward … in this case, the swam of quakes are happening a few every week without a large shock.”

The emergency agency also tweeted the state does have several fault systems and is “one of the most seismically active states on the East Coast.” However, some geologists are puzzled at why so many swarms are happening. 

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