A warning for potential South Carolina tourists: You may not be safe | Opinion
To potential South Carolina tourists in 2025:
You should consider going elsewhere this year. You may not be safe here.
South Carolina law enforcement officials and politicians, including Gov. Henry McMaster, have essentially said that it is lawful for someone to unnecessarily shoot you to death in circumstances manufactured by the person who killed you. That thinking is premised upon their interpretation of “stand your ground,” a law we’ve had on the books for nearly two decades.
It’s not hyperbole. What’s more is that precedent has recently been set in Horry County, home to Myrtle Beach, one of the country’s most popular tourist destinations.
A North Carolina man named Scott Spivey got into what may have been a road rage incident with local restaurant owner Weldon Boyd and his friend Kenneth “Bradley” Williams. Spivey drove away, and Boyd and Williams chased him down after following him in Weldon’s truck for nine miles. One said Spivey showed a gun while driving.
They caught him on Camp Swamp Road near Loris. A witness told 911 Spivey got out of his truck and said, “Don’t follow me anymore.” That road is where they shot him multiple times. Police later towed away Spivey’s truck — with Spivey’s body still inside. The men later laughed and bragged about having shot him.
That was two years ago. Neither Boyd nor Williams has ever been charged or arrested.
The actions of a growing number of Horry County police officers are under scrutiny because of an investigation that was either corrupt or inept. Boyd was well acquainted with Horry County police officers, but the extent of it didn’t emerge until a lawsuit filed by Spivey’s sister, Jennifer Foley, turned up damaging evidence about Boyd, Williams and the cops who coddled them shortly after Boyd and Williams shot Scott Spivey to death.
But that’s not the most disturbing aspect of this case for you, as potential tourists drawn anywhere in South Carolina this spring and summer. It’s that it isn’t only Horry County police who have decided that type of shooting — fatal shots after chasing someone for nine miles — was perfectly fine.
The Fifteenth Circuit Solicitor’s Office, which oversees Horry and Georgetown counties, was perfectly fine with it, or was willing to look the other way. So was the State Law Enforcement Division, South Carolina’s premier law enforcement agency. So was Attorney General Alan Wilson’s office. And so was Gov. McMaster.
In some manner, they’ve all accepted the most absurd interpretation of an already absurd stand your ground law: In the good ole state of South Carolina, we get to chase people down for miles and put a few bullets in their brain knowing all we have to do is scream self-defense.
Heck, neither Boyd nor Williams even had to face charges and trigger a stand your ground hearing. That’s how much this state has refashioned itself into a veritable Wild Wild West.
And now that President Donald Trump — whom this state overwhelmingly voted for three consecutive times — has pulled back federal oversight of police departments, you may not be successful asking the Federal Bureau of Investigations to step in, or be confident it would take your death seriously even if it did.
That’s 21st century South Carolina.
That’s why it is dangerous for you to come and spend your tourist dollars here.
I say this to the college students who plan to head to Myrtle Beach in the coming days and weeks before graduation, and others planning to attend our annual huge motorcycle rallies. I say this to those who’ve long wanted to wander the historic streets and shops of Charleston.
I don’t say this lightly. Tourism is the state’s economic engine. Our economy would collapse if you decided instead to spend your money in Florida, California or Tennessee. I don’t want that to happen. But I can’t lie to you.
Our state is going backwards. It long ago embraced a cartoonish version of Second Amendment rights. Not even that was enough, so we’ve taken it to another extreme.
I can chase you down for miles, shoot and kill you, and may not even ever have to feel the cold steel of cuffs wrapped around my wrists after being arrested for having done so, let alone face murder or manslaughter charges.
I wish this wasn’t so.
It is, though. Just ask the Spiveys — who are tragically feeling the fatal effects of a state’s slide backwards.
This story was originally published May 12, 2025 at 6:00 AM with the headline "A warning for potential South Carolina tourists: You may not be safe | Opinion."