Mayoral candidate stages kidnapping on Facebook in ‘plot to gain votes,’ SC cops say
A candidate in a crowded South Carolina mayoral race is accused of orchestrating an elaborate ruse for sympathy votes using a fake kidnapping and Facebook Live.
Sabrina Belcher, 29, was arrested and charged withconspiracy and filing a false police report after Sumter police say she filmed herself being kidnapped, beaten and robbed on Facebook earlier this week.
Christopher James Eaddy, 34, was also charged with conspiracy in the case, the Sumter Police Department said in a news release.
“They staged a kidnapping and beating in order to garner publicity, sympathy and votes in the November election,” police said.
Belcher met with officers just before 11:30 p.m. Tuesday and told them she had been “assaulted and kidnapped by an unknown man during an attempted robbery,” according to police. She also said the man had knocked out the windows of her car.
Police said Belcher was taken to a nearby hospital for her injuries and was later released.
In the video, Belcher had tried to “discredit a fellow candidate,” according to police. They also said she had “ongoing plans to smear other mayoral candidates prior to the election.”
It wasn’t immediately clear how the scheme unraveled, but police said investigators learned Belcher had given a fake name for the man she believed had attacked her.
“Officers later determined she was in contact with Eaddy whom she had worked with days prior to concoct and stage the reported incident,” police said.
Belcher was booked into the Sumter County Detention Center with a $10,000 bond, according to jail records.
“This was simply an effort to create disorder and discontent in our community for personal gain,” Police Chief Russell Roark said in the news release. “As a result, a valuable number of resources, including personnel, man hours of the police department as well as local medical professionals, were wasted based on false information.”
Sumter, about 45 miles east of Columbia, is home to roughly 40,000 residents. Current Mayor Joseph T. McElveen Jr., who was elected in 2000, is the city’s longest-serving mayor.
McElveen announced in January he would not seek re-election.
Belcher is one of six candidates seeking to replace him, according to the local newspaper, The Sumter Item. Her opponents include two city council members and a controversial former S.C. congressional candidate, Archie Parnell.
According to Belcher’s campaign page on Facebook, she is the first “Black female candidate ever to run.”
The page describes her as “a decorated community activist and local volunteer” as well as a volunteer firefighter in Sumter County. Her platform includes a bid for “24/7 police presence during school bus hours to help protect our children.”
If elected, The Sumter Item reported, she would be the city’s first Black mayor.
“It’s not so much about the race because I have actually lived here long enough to see that there’s a lot of different injustices and things that could be better,” Belcher told the newspaper in a June interview. “We are learning to come together, and we are learning to show that it’s not about the color of your skin.”
This story was originally published August 21, 2020 at 1:10 PM with the headline "Mayoral candidate stages kidnapping on Facebook in ‘plot to gain votes,’ SC cops say."
