Police identify the biker who threatened Bluffton family with handgun, ethnic slurs
Police identified a man on a motorcycle who they say threatened a Bluffton family by pointing a handgun at them and yelling ethnic slurs.
On Thursday, the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office identified one of three men on motorcycles who pulled over a Hispanic family on Simmonsville Road on Oct. 23.
His identity is not being released because he has not been charged, and the case is under investigation, according to Maj. Bob Bromage.
Around 8:15 p.m., the Bluffton family — a woman, her husband, their daughter, and her brother-in-law — had turned left, heading west on U.S. 278 after leaving Lowe’s, according to a Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office report.
That’s when three men on motorcycles also heading west began flashing their lights and yelling at the family, it said.
The family turned onto Simmonsville Road toward Bluffton Parkway, and the bikers began driving “erratically” around the family’s car, the report said. One bike went in front of their car and began slowing down; another biker pulled behind them, and the third pulled up to their right side.
The biker on the right side took out a handgun, pointed it at the Bluffton woman, and began yelling anti-Hispanic slurs at them, the report said.
The woman told the Sheriff’s Office, through a translator, that she “feared for her life.”
On Wednesday, the agency released the picture of the biker with the handgun in hopes the public would help identify him. Since identifying him on Thursday, the Sheriff’s Office removed his photo from its site.
