Tag: South Carolina
Driver dies after cops take him for DUI test instead of hospital
The death of a South Carolina dad is marked by questions as officials try to piece together why he was brought to a police station for a Breathalyzer test instead of a hospital.
Nathaniel Rhodes, a 58-year-old father, collapsed on Aug. 12, 2018, at Charleston Police Headquarters following a traffic accident and died four days later, according to his family’s attorney.
His relatives are now demanding authorities investigate whether protocol was followed when Rhodes was taken off a stretcher and taken to the police department.
The police report stated Rhodes claimed to have “no injuries that would stop him from completing tests” — but the law firm representing his family told The Post that he never signed a form refusing treatment.
The release was provided to The Post and showed an officer’s signature on the line for the patient.
“After he was put on a stretcher and put in an ambulance for transport to the hospital for medical treatment, a CPD officer fraudulently signed a ‘Refusal to Transport’ form on Rhodes’ behalf so the officer could conduct a field sobriety test,” Ryan Julison with Bamberg Legal said Monday.
“The officer then ordered that Rhodes be removed from the stretcher, taken off the ambulance and transported to the police station rather than the hospital,” attorneys said.
Rhodes’ family alleges he had eight broken ribs, internal injuries and a ruptured liver while he was being booked. Surveillance footage from the police station showed the dad in distress.
“While at the station Rhodes complained that he was in severe pain,” the law firm said. “His pleas apparently weren’t taken seriously as video captured one of the EMT’s who was supposed to be caring for Rhodes doing a dance and commenting how he (the EMT) ‘looked good on camera.’ ”
His loved ones claim the delay taking him to the hospital proved to be fatal.
“The family alleges that poisonous toxins could have been flooding his bloodstream while he sat at the police station,” attorneys said. “By the time Rhodes was actually transported to the hospital, it was too late.”
Photo Credit: Nathaniel Rhodes – Courtesy of Bamberg Legal
Couple charged after boy tortured with hot pepper on genitals
A South Carolina mom and her boyfriend face charges after her kids were allegedly tortured with hot sauce and spices, according to officials.
Sabrina Irene Emerick, 25, and her boyfriend Robert Earl Kailiala Saladaga, 37, were both charged with cruelty to children, the Greenville Police Department said Wednesday.
Saladaga — who lives with Emerick — was also charged with assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature.
The two children, ages 5 and 7, were interviewed by child services and detailed abuse at the hands of Saladaga, according to the Greenville News.
Police said Emerick was aware of the “horrific” abuse and allowed her children to continue to be at risk.
The children claimed Saladaga went to lengths to punish them. He allegedly forced the 5-year-old boy to take extremely cold and hot showers — and suffocated him with pillows on multiple occasions.
Saladaga is also accused of rubbing a hot pepper on one of the children’s genitals as punishment for wetting the couch in their sleep.
The 7-year-old claimed Saladaga put a pepper in his eyes and mouth to torture him. In another incident, Saladaga allegedly put hot sauce all over the 5-year-old kid’s face, eyes and mouth. Both instances allegedly forced the kids to vomit.
“Heinous crimes against children are some of the most difficult cases we investigate,” Greenville Police Lt. Jason Rampey said in a news release. “The horrific stories of abuse endured by these children are sickening and reprehensible. As such, the children have been removed from this abusive environment.”
The children were removed from the home and are living with a family member, the Greenville News reported.
Saladaga and Emerick were released Feb. 15 from jail on bond.
via: https://nypost.com/2019/02/20/couple-charged-after-boy-tortured-with-hot-pepper-on-genitals-cops/
Photo Credit: Robert Earl Kailiala Saladaga and Sabrina Irene Emerick Greenville Police Department
Jilted wife reportedly made cheating hubby get her name tattooed over his crotch
The South Carolina woman on trial for allegedly abducting her husband’s lover reportedly forced her spouse to get her own name tattooed above his crotch as payback for cheating.
Testimony in the kidnapping trial against Tammy Moorer revealed Monday that the jilted wife was overheard explaining the bizarre “punishment” to her 38-year-old husband, Sidney Moorer.
Tammy is accused of conspiring to kidnap 20-year-old Heather Elvis, who mysteriously vanished in December 2013 from Myrtle Beach after having a sexual relationship with the defendant’s husband. Nearly five years later, the young hostess hasn’t been found and is presumed dead.
Prosecutors contend Tammy became vindictive after discovering the affair in October 2013 and hearing rumors about the possibility that Elvis was pregnant.
Jacob Melton, who was friends with one of the Moorers’ sons, testified Monday that Sidney got Tammy’s name tattooed on his lower waist when she learned about the extramarital affair.
“If you didn’t have that thing with that girl, this wouldn’t be happening,” Tammy allegedly told her husband, according to Melton’s testimony.
As the trial entered its seventh day Monday, Elvis’ former employer also provided testimony.
Dennis Clark, a former manager at the Tilted Kilt — the bar where Sidney performed maintenance work and met Elvis — said Tammy demanded on the phone that the hostess be fired or her husband wouldn’t continue to do repairs.
Clark claimed the conversation occurred sometime between October and December 2013.
“Tammy barged into the conversation and proceeded to tell me how Heather was causing problems for her family, spreading rumors that she was pregnant by her husband and [said] to fire her,” Clark told the court.
The defense team maintained Monday that the evidence in the trial shows there was an affair but doesn’t indicate that Tammy played any role in Elvis’ disappearance.
Both Tammy and Sidney have been charged in connection to Elvis’ case. The pair initially faced murder and kidnapping allegations in 2014, but two years later the murder charges were dropped.
Sidney was tried last year on the kidnapping charge, but the proceedings ended in a mistrial when the jurors couldn’t come to a unanimous decision. No future date has been set for his retrial.
In 2017, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison for obstruction of justice in the case.
Teen shoots cousin over salt and vinegar potato chips
A South Carolina teen shot his cousin in the chest – critically wounding him – after warning him not to eat his salt and vinegar potato chips.
“Do not touch my chips, or I’ll shoot you,” Ryan Dean Langdale barked at the 17-year-old victim before pulling the trigger during the bizarre episode last month, The Post and Courier newspaper reported, citing a sheriff’s incident report.
Langdale, 19, now faces charges of attempted murder, using a firearm in a violent crime and obstructing justice in the Sept. 29 shooting at Langdale’s home in rural Colleton County.
The suspect tried to cover-up the crime, by telling police that his cousin had accidentally shot himself by dropping a hunting rifle while cleaning it, according to the Colleton County Sheriff’s Office.
The victim – succumbing to pressure from his older cousin — initially confirmed the bogus account to police before being rushed into surgery, but cops weren’t buying it.
“We knew from the beginning that something wasn’t right,” sheriff’s Maj. J.W. Chapman said, according to The Post and Courier. “The more we looked into it, the more it seemed odd.”
Chapman noted that the route the bullet took through the victim’s chest was “impossible” if the teenager shot himself by mistake, the news outlet reported.
A week after the shooting incident, the victim awoke at the Trident Medical Center in North Charleston and admitted to investigators that it was indeed the chips– which he never even touched– that nearly sent him six feet under.
After Langdale warned him, Langdale went into a back room, grabbed a rifle and pointed it at the victim, according to the sheriff’s incident report.
“The next thing he knew,” the document said, “the rifle went off.”
According to the report, Langdale had switched out the firearm he used to cover up his involvement.
The rifle was found when authorities searched Langdale’s home this week.
He surrendered to the crime Wednesday and a judge set his bail at $55,000.
via: https://nypost.com/2018/10/11/teen-shoots-cousin-over-salt-and-vinegar-potato-chips-cops/
Wife admits fatally poisoning ‘unfaithful’ hubby with eye drops
A Bible-studying South Carolina woman who once griped online that her hubby was unfaithful was charged with murder — after admitting to poisoning him with eye drops, officials said.
Lana Clayton, 52, was booked Friday after an autopsy uncovered a high amount of tetrahydrozoline in her husband’s body, officials said.
The chemical is found in over-the-counter drops, such as Visine, and reduces redness by restricting blood vessels. But when it’s swallowed, it acts as a neurotoxin and attacks the nervous system.
Lana Clayton admitted to spiking her husband’s water with eye drops over a three day span, between July 19 and 21, the York County Sherriff’s office said.
Steven Clayton, 64, was found dead July 21 in their palatial home, worth over $800,000, in Clover, South Carolina, about 30 miles southwest of Charlotte, N.C. It appeared he had fallen down the stairs.
The home was designed as a copy of George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate, and Steven Clayton had carefully worked to restore his property, according to The Herald of Rock Hill, S.C.
An accountant, Steven Clayton was the founder of Physical Therapy Resources, a national company with branches throughout the United States. He retired in 1995, according to his obituary in the Herald.
His funeral was held in the home’s back yard on Aug. 4, before the autopsy results revealed the cause of death, according to WSOC-TV in Charlotte.
One neighbor said she knew Lana Clayton from a neighborhood Bible Study group.
A friend told a local newspaper that Lana worked in nursing for the VA hospital in Charlotte. Police have not released a motive for the crime.
She posted a comment on what appears to be her little-used Facebook page in March 2010 that suggested her husband was unfaithful. “My husband is not a drunk he had an affair. However, he is the father of my children and my kids look at my Facebook. Soooo. I do appreciate the support though.”
She had already started legal action concerning the estate, which also included a lot next door to the home worth nearly $400,000, the Herald reported.
Neighbor Ken Sanford told the Rock Hill, S.C., Herald that “seemed like a sweet lady,” and “Steven was very proud of her accomplishments.”
“I am just stunned,” Sanford said.
Lana Clayton was also charged with unlawful malicious tampering of food. Because she is charged with murder, she will not be released on bond. It’s unclear if she has yet named a lawyer.
An Oklahoma native according to her Facebook page, she has no prior criminal record in South Carolina, the Herald reported.
via: https://nypost.com/2018/09/01/wife-admits-fatally-poisoning-hubby-with-eye-drops-cops/
‘I’m a white, clean girl’: DUI suspect is the picture of entitlement
A boozed-up South Carolina woman pulled over for blowing past a stop sign at 60 mph told cops she shouldn’t be arrested because she’s a “very clean, thoroughbred, white girl,” according to a police report.
But Lauren Elizabeth Cutshaw’s lecture didn’t convince officers from the Bluffton Police Department — who arrested her on charges of speeding, disregarding a stop sign, simple possession of marijuana, driving under the influence and possession of drug paraphernalia, a police spokesman confirmed to The Post.
After getting pulled over at about 1:45 a.m. Saturday near Bluffton and May River roads, where she was spotted speeding through a four-way stop sign, Cutshaw told cops she had had just two glasses of wine, according to the police report obtained by the Island Packet.
“I mean I was celebrating my birthday,” Cutshaw, who turns 33 on Thursday, told the cops when they asked her how big the glasses were for her alleged two drinks, according to the report.
But she didn’t stop there. Cutshaw gave the officers a litany of other reasons why she deserved to be let off the hook: She maintained perfect grades during all of her school years, was a cheerleader and a member of a sorority. Her partner is also a cop, Cutshaw said.
“I’m a white, clean girl,” Cutshaw said, according to the report.
When the officers asked what exactly that meant, she replied, “You’re a cop, you should know what that means.”
The police report indicated how surprised the officers were by the comments.
“Making statements such as these as a means to justify not being arrested are unusual in my experience as a law enforcement officer and I believe further demonstrate the suspect’s level of intoxication,” according to the report.
The officer also noted that Cutshaw, who had a blood alcohol level of 0.18, failed sobriety tests and had bloodshot eyes. She was also slurring her words, according to the report.
Cutshaw was later booked into the Beaufort County Detention Center. She was no longer in custody as of Tuesday, according to online jail records. Attempts to reach her were unsuccessful.
Woman poisoned baby in twisted plot to get husband back
A South Carolina woman — who admitted to murdering her baby by feeding the toddler a deadly amount of salt in a twisted plot to win her husband back — was sentenced Wednesday to 30 years in prison.
Kimberly Martines, of Fingerville, must serve 85 percent of her sentence before she is eligible for parole, FOX Carolina reported. The 25-year-old pleaded guilty to homicide by child abuse following her daughter’s death in July 2016.
Martines’ 17-month-old daughter, Peyton, arrived at the hospital with an inflated amount of sodium in her blood. The child, suffering from acute salt poisoning, died three days later after doctors took her off of life support.
Martines initially told investigators Peyton ingested large amounts of salt when the toddler and her twin sister got into a bag that was left on a bookcase. But Martines’ 4-year-old son later told officials he watched his mother feed his sister a spoonful of salt.
Police found a bag of salt under a sofa cushion.
Martines later confessed to giving her daughter the poison dose of salt to “get her husband back into her life” after the couple separated. She chose Peyton as her victim because she was near her at the time, FOX Carolina reported.
via: https://nypost.com/2018/07/26/woman-poisoned-baby-in-twisted-plot-to-get-husband-back-cops/
Teen raped girl as pals banged door asking for a ‘turn’
A South Carolina teen is accused of raping a 16-year-old girl at his home while his friends banged on the door to ask for a “turn,” according to authorities.
Joshua Allen Hughes, 17, was charged with criminal sexual conduct and pointing and presenting a firearm in connection to the June 6 incident at a Myrtle Beach residence, news station WPDE reported.
The girl told police that she talked to Hughes on Snapchat before he picked her up with two other boys in his car.
When they arrived at the home, she reportedly went upstairs with Hughes, who began kissing her. The teen girl claimed she told him that she didn’t want to have sex but he proceeded to anyway, according to police.
From outside the room, several other boys allegedly “began to bang and yell… telling [Hughes] to let them in so they could have a turn,” the police report stated.
The teen girl said that when she tried to escape, the other guests “pointed firearms at her and began to taunt her about the incident,” according to officials.
Hughes was arrested and booked Tuesday at J. Reuben Long Detention Center. He was released to home detention on $15,615 bond, according to court records.
via: https://nypost.com/2018/06/18/teen-raped-girl-as-pals-banged-door-asking-for-a-turn-cops/
Serial killer with shipping container dungeon: My victims had it coming
The South Carolina serial killer who kidnapped a woman and kept her chained inside a shipping container, has spoken publicly for the first time since his November arrest — and his words are almost as brutal as his crimes.
In a chilling letter mailed to The Post last week, Todd Kohlhepp claimed the seven people he murdered were “criminals” and that he was merely trying to “save” the 30-year-old woman he had viciously imprisoned after killing her boyfriend.
“No one wants to really look at who they were, families, connections,” the 46-year-old killer wrote of his victims.
The cold-blooded murderer shot and killed seven people over the span of 13 years, burying three of the bodies across his 95-acre spread in rural northwestern South Carolina.
Kohlhepp, who’s serving seven consecutive life sentences after pleading guilty to the killings, went on to accuse the woman he kept in a metal cargo container for two months, Kala Brown, of being “as big a criminal as I am.”
She “wasn’t raped,” he claimed in his barbaric, victim-blaming diatribe, written neatly in script on two double-side looseleaf pages.
“All of my victims were criminals,” he declared.
In his only hint of remorse, he then wrote, “Not that it makes it right, I was wrong to do what I did.”
He provided no further details, and authorities dismissed his accusations.
Kohlhepp is an “attention seeker” who “needs to stay in prison and be forgotten,” said Murray Glenn, a spokesman for the Spartanburg County prosecutor.
Brown’s rep said she was not yet ready to discuss her ordeal or comment on Kohlhepp’s missive from prison.
The killer was captured after a terrorized Brown, 30, was rescued by police on Nov. 3, 2016. They had used her cell phone records to trace her steps to Kohlhepp’s home.
She was found chained by the neck inside a dark-green 30-foot-long container tucked among rows of trees far back on Kohlhepp’s property, where she said she was raped “twice a day, every day.”
Kohlhepp “let me know that if I tried to run, he’d kill me. If I tried to hurt him, he’d kill me. If I fought back, he would kill me,” she told Dr.Phil.
Brown and her boyfriend, Charlie Carver, 32, went missing in August 2016.
They had gone to Kohlhepp’s property to help him with yardwork. They had previously worked several jobs for Kohlhepp over a three-month period, Brown said, and nothing ever set off warning bells.
But when Kohlhepp went inside a shed to retrieve gardening tools, he came out with a weapon and shot Carver “three times in the chest [and] wrapped him in a blue tarp,” Brown told investigators.
The murderer, who once worked as a real estate agent, bizarrely claimed in his letter to The Post that he was trying to save Brown.
“She was in [the] shipping container because I didn’t want to hurt her, refused to turn her over to someone else who would and was buying time while I figured out a way to resolve this non-violently,” he wrote.
Again, he provided no further details or evidence.
After Spartanburg, S.C., officers freed Brown, she helped lead them to Carver’s body and indicated there were others.
Kohlhepp eventually confessed to Carver’s murder and six others — four employees of the Superbike Motorsports shop in Chesnee, S.C., in 2003 because they wouldn’t allow him to return a motorcycle; and Meagan Leigh McCraw Coxie, 25, and her boyfriend Johnny Joe Coxie, 29, who had been missing since December 2015 when Kohlhepp also recruited them to do “yard work.”
In his letter, Kohlhepp accused the bike shop of being a “chop shop” with “$80,000 cash sitting in [a] safe.” He made no mention of the Coxies.
The killer had previously served 14 years in prison for kidnapping and raping a 14-year-old girl in 1986.
In a psych evaluation that same year, court psychiatrist Dr. Roger Martig said Kohlhepp had an “above average” IQ of 118, but described him as “extremely self-centered” as well as “touchy and defensive.”
The exam concluded he was not psychotic, but was “distrustful of others and generally unconcerned or lacks understanding as to how his behavior affects others.”
South Carolina Father Commits Suicide After His 2-Year-Old Finds Loaded Gun, Fatally Shoots Himself
After a South Carolina toddler accidentally fatally shot himself, the boy’s father committed suicide when police responded Wednesday morning, according to police in Columbia.
Both died of a single gunshot wound to the head, according to Richland County Coroner Gary Watts.
Investigators said the boy’s mother called police after her son, 2-year-old Kyree Myers, found the loaded weapon inside a Columbia home and fired it.
When officers arrived around 11 a.m., the boy’s father, 38-year-old Keon Myers, was holding a gun and threatening to hurt himself, according to Columbia Police Department Chief Skip Holbrook.
Police tried to get Myers to put the gun down, but he refused. After several commands to drop the weapon, Myers shot himself, police said.
EMS workers took both father and son to a local hospital where they were pronounced dead.
“Our hearts are heavy at the tremendous loss of life,” Holbrook said in a statement. “We have victim advocates assigned to the case to assist the family during this difficult time. This experience has also been emotionally trying for responding officers. They will participate in a debriefing to discuss the incident and receive further support as needed.”
Police are still trying to determine if the father and son fired the same gun. Investigators are also working with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to figure out where the weapon came from and how it ended up in the house.
via: http://ktla.com/2017/09/07/father-commits-suicide-after-2-year-old-finds-loaded-gun-shoots-himself/