Lexington County home surrounded as police seek wanted man. What we know
Residents of a neighborhood in the West Columbia area reported hearing bangs and a police loud speaker Saturday morning. The Lexington County Sheriff's Department confirmed that it was among agencies on scene attempting to execute an arrest warrant for a man accused of domestic violence.
In a standoff that was still ongoing Saturday afternoon, Lexington County Sheriff deputies, along with other law enforcement agencies, surrounded a home in the 2600 block of Crest Drive near Platt Springs Road in an effort to 'arrest a man wanted on charges associated with a domestic violence incident last night in Chapin,' Captain Adam Myrick of the Lexington County Sheriff's Department told The State in an email.
While the identify of the man remains unknown, neighbors in the community began posting on Facebook Saturday morning that a 'major police barricade ... has been going on for hours.' Residents reported hearing loudspeakers and bangs and seeing dogs and other resources deployed on the scene. The sheriff's department didn't provide confirm any such specifics about the scene.
'Deputies and officers from other agencies have secured the immediate area around the scene to keep nearby homes and residents safe,' Myrick said.
This is a breaking story and will be updated.
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Fox News
38 minutes ago
- Fox News
A speeding ticket led me to Ronald Reagan's hometown and a deeper understanding of America's president
My wife, four daughters and I were driving a rented minivan from Chicago to St. Louis for my cousin's wedding when I suddenly became aware of a police car behind me with flashing lights, signaling me to pull over to the shoulder of the road. A clean-cut, very young and very nice police officer looking to be in his early 20s approached my window and asked me if I realized I had been driving in a construction zone where the speed limit was 45. I told him I could swear the sign had just said 65. He acknowledges that the speed limit was 65 awhile back, but it had most recently been 45. It wasn't until later that I figured out that I was the latest victim of a speed trap, and I would be charged with driving 20 miles over the speed limit. As the officer filled out the ticket, I noticed his hands were shaking. Must be new on the job, I figured and, sensing his weakness, I tried to see if he wouldn't let me off with a warning. He said he couldn't and noted I must appear in court in a month. "But I'm visiting from California," I pleaded. "There's no way I can come back in a month." He urged me to call the court and see if they'd speed up my court appearance. It was only then, as he finished writing the ticket that I looked at it and noticed that the jurisdiction in which my "crime" had been committed was Dixon, Illinois, the hometown of Ronald Reagan. As I tried to process this information, I was reminded of what my mother, who was just as devout as Reagan's mother, often said, that there is a Divine Plan, and that nothing is random in a universe where God orders the steps of His children. Which in my case meant that I was being led to Dixon, against my will, perhaps for a reason. But I still had details to attend to: Following the officer's suggestion, I pulled over and called a clerk at Dixon City Hall to explain my predicament. She agreed I could come and see the judge – but not until the next day. So, I announced to the family, we were spending the night in Dixon, Illinois. We exited the highway at downtown Dixon and settled into the Holiday Inn. After eating some pizza, we decided to see the sights. I've never been to Dixon and had no idea this trip was going to take me by it, but as long as we were there, I decided to make the most of it and learn as much about Reagan as I could. We went to a gas station and asked for directions to two places I feel I needed to visit to better understand Ronald Reagan: the Rock River where he saved 77 lives as a lifeguard, and one of his childhood homes on Hennepin Avenue. We drove down a dusty trail to get to the river and spent nearly an hour looking for the famous log that Reagan was said to have carved a notch in for each life he saved. But of course, there was nothing to be found. After a relaxing afternoon explaining to my kids the significance of the Rock River, visiting the edge of its stony banks, and playing there as kids are wont to do, we piled into the car. Next stop: the home on Hennepin Avenue and more insights into Reagan. The home was white and small, and I stopped in the kitchen and in the upstairs room to think about what the scene looked like 75 years earlier when Reagan's mother Nelle busied herself making a meal while her son did his homework. I also stopped to purchase some poems which had been written by Nelle – nothing fancy or even bound, but just a clump of papers which had been stapled together. After taking some pictures in front of the home we were off again; back to the hotel to get ready for my encounter with the judge the next morning. As I passed through the metal detectors with my wife and four young daughters in tow, I quickly found my public defender who told me what I needed to do. I could go to jail, he said, but most likely I'd just have to pay a fine so long as I pleaded guilty. When I explained that I had been merely traveling at the speed of the car in front of me and that there were cars behind me, he just smiled and said I should tell it to the judge – and in a few short minutes I did just that. In fact, I also had video footage shot on my cellphone which showed what happened when I tried to go at the speed limit after my citation. Not only were cars honking at me from behind, but one driver sped around my right side and showed me his middle finger. I had the whole thing on tape to prove to the judge that 45 mph was an unreasonable rate of speed. "How do you plead?" he asked as I stood before him. "Your honor, I'd like to show you some footage I took to show you what happened when I drove at the speed that was posted," I said with a hopeful tone. "Son, I'm not going to watch your video," he says. "Now, how do you plead?" I thought about the public defender's warning about the possibility of jail and my four young daughters who needed their dad to stay a free man. I quickly replied: "Guilty, your Honor," and with that I was on my way to the clerk to pay a hefty $500 fine. The nice lady at the window listened to my story and then looked down at her clipboard. She noted that I was the 19th case that day, and without exactly saying it, something about her smile left me with the strong impression that this was how Dixon kept their city services funded. Nineteen people at $500 a head, hey, that would keep a lot of services funded, I thought to myself. The fact that I fell prey to this speed trap ultimately didn't matter much because when I got back to California, my Aunt Jeanne, who had heard about my predicament, had sent a check to cover the ticket. And, I had come to understand that there was purpose in what had happened and that my trip to Dixon was part of what Reagan would call the "DP" or Divine Plan, for me to better understand a man whom I thought I understood. Excerpted from "Making Reagan: A Memoir From The Producer of The Reagan Movie" by Mark Joseph. The Reagan film is available on DVD/Blu-Ray and at Amazon and iTunes.
Fox News
39 minutes ago
- Fox News
Buster Murdaugh scores legal win in defamation fight over documentary's murder implications: former state AG
Alex Murdaugh's surviving son, Buster Murdaugh, was granted a "victory" this week when a federal judge decided to allow his defamation suit against CNN parent company Warner Bros. to proceed, former South Carolina Attorney General Charlie Condon told Fox News Digital. Court documents filed in the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina on June 9 detail Judge Richard Mark Gergel's order denying Warner Bros' and Blackfin Inc.'s motion to dismiss the lawsuit, which alleges that the media conglomerates "insinuated and implied" in their respective Murdaugh documentary that Buster, now 28, "had murdered a 19-year-old Hampton County man named Stephen Smith." Smith — Buster's former classmate — was found dead on a rural road in Hampton County, where the Murdaugh family is from, in the summer of 2015. An autopsy later determined that he had been fatally struck by a vehicle in a hit-and-run while he was walking along the run after running out of gas. "[T]here were rumors … Buster Murdaugh was somehow involved in his death, and the basis of the lawsuit is that these media companies — the main claim being something called defamation by implication — that they would take interviews of people living in that area that would, in effect, repeat these rumors about Buster Murdaugh being involved in this murder," Condon said. "And the lawsuit claims that they just simply aired these interviews of rumors … and would juxtapose those interviews with actual law enforcement documents and related information." "I do think that [Buster's] reputation has been severely damaged by the reporting that went on." The defamation suit alleges that Warner Bros and Blackfin, which produced the Warner Bros documentary, implicated Buster in Smith's death. The media companies tried early on to dismiss it. Fox News Digital has reached out to attorneys for both media companies. Buster is arguing that statements regarding Smith's death made in the documentary about his father's crimes "are defamatory and falsely accuse the Plaintiff of committing a crime or moral turpitude," an amended complaint states. "The claims have been published to hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of viewers who watched the show, including viewers in South Carolina, and the defamatory statements continue to be republished as of the filing of this action on a broad array of streaming platforms and channels owned by Defendant Warner Bros." Warner Bros and Blackfin filed a motion to dismiss on multiple grounds, including the First Amendment, court filings show. "Plaintiff's Amended Complaint necessitates dismissal for multiple independent reasons. Plaintiff fails to sufficiently identify the allegedly defamatory content, as the Rules require. … Leaving aside the lack of requisite specificity, the First Amendment bars Plaintiff's claims as to the Blackfin Documentary because it does not state as a fact that he is 'the murderer of Stephen Smith' (which is the only alleged defamation)," attorneys for the two media companies said in their motion to dismiss, among other reasons to dismiss. Investigators began probing possible links between Smith's death and the Murdaugh family after Buster's mother and brother were both shot to death just miles from the clan's South Carolina estate in June 2021 but did not find any kind of link between the Murdaughs and Smith's death. Gergel ultimately sided with Buster. "Here, the Court need not decide at this stage which state's privilege law applies because Plaintiff's theory of liability does not rest solely on the reporting or republication of law enforcement reports. Rather, Plaintiff alleges that Defendants' selective juxtaposition of law enforcement interviews with interviews of individuals within Hampton County and reports regarding the Murdaugh family, in tandem, create the defamatory implication that Plaintiff is responsible for Stephen Smith's death," the judge wrote in his order. "The Court finds that the fair report privilege does not bar Plaintiff's lawsuit." READ THE OTHE ORDER: Condon called the decision "a real victory for Buster Murdaugh and his legal team that they were able to keep the case alive." "A real victory for Buster Murdaugh and his legal team." "We'll see where it goes with discovery," he said. …I was at the Murdaugh trial for every day for six weeks, and I must say, after that case ended and when these different media companies had different stories circulating about the case and related matters, including the Stephen Smith murder, I wouldn't know just personally. There were numbers of people that would routinely ask me about Buster Murdaugh being investigated for the murder of Stephen Smith. They would speculate that he's going to be arrested soon." Condon added that the fact that the suit "survived this early stage … is really significant in terms of where this case might head." "I do know Judge Gergel would apply the law very rigorously, and the fact that he's letting these cases go forward tells me that, again, at this very early stage, these cases appear to have merit." Condon said. GET REAL-TIME UPDATES DIRECTLY ON THE TRUE CRIME HUB The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) opened a homicide investigation into Smith's death June 23, 2021 — about two weeks after Alex Murdaugh fatally shot his wife Maggie, 52, and his son, Paul, 22. Alex Murdaugh was convicted in Maggie and Paul's murders in March 2023 and was sentenced to life in prison. The disgraced South Carolina legal scion also pleaded guilty to dozens of financial crimes tied to his family's personal injury law firm. Prosecutors said Alex murdered his wife and youngest son to distract from his financial crimes. The now-56-year-old took in clients who had suffered injuries in various accidents and helped them get millions of dollars in damages, most of which he would keep for himself without telling the victims. Smith's mother wrote a letter to the FBI in 2016 implicating the Murdaughs in her son's death, explaining her belief that the Murdaugh family staged the accident in an effort to steal more money. "The first call my family received after the murder was from authorities notifying us of Stephen's death," she wrote at the time. "The second came very quickly the same morning from Solicitor Randolph Murdaugh." The retired solicitor, who had served as the region's top prosecutor before retiring in 2005, is the late father of Alex Murdaugh. He allegedly told Smith's mother he was willing to work pro bono as a liaison between the family and investigators but soon stopped returning their calls, the letter says. An attorney for the Smith family did not respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment. Buster issued a statement in 2023 through his attorney denying any role in Smith's death: "These baseless rumors of my involvement in Stephen's death are false," he said. "My heart goes out to the Smith family." Fox News Digital reached out to Buster's attorneys for comment regarding Gergel's order this week.
Fox News
39 minutes ago
- Fox News
Luxury real estate brothers hit with new charges in federal sex trafficking case
New accusations against the three brothers accused of orchestrating a decade-long scheme to sex traffic women were revealed this week as authorities look to further cement their case against the high-profile defendants. Real estate moguls Tal Alexander and Oren Alexander, along with their brother, Alon, are facing charges of conspiracy to commit sex trafficking, inducement to travel to engage in unlawful sexual activity and three counts of sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion, according to a federal superseding indictment. Tal Alexander faces additional sex trafficking and inducement counts, with Alon and Oren Alexander facing an additional charge of aggravated sex abuse, according to court documents. The charges stem from allegations from at least six new victims – including one minor. The brothers pleaded not guilty to all counts, bringing the total to 10 charges against them. "The federal charges in the indictment against Alon, Oren, and Tal Alexander are serious because they involve sex trafficking and aggravated sexual abuse," Kelly Hyman, a trial attorney and host of the true-crime podcast "Unresolved: The Diddy Cases," told Fox News Digital. "Since the charges are brought at the federal level, there can be more severe penalties compared to state level crimes." Federal prosecutors allege the three men lured dozens of victims to be sexually assaulted by promising luxury travel and other expensive accommodations, conspiring for more than a decade and leveraging their real estate industry status to attract women from 2009 to 2021. The brothers allegedly would organize elaborate vacations for their victims, subsequently assaulting the women while traveling. "In sex trafficking cases, deception, drugs, and false pretenses, like promises of luxury travel, could be considered important facts if it goes to the force, fraud or coercion of the sex trafficking," Hyman said. "And thus could have legal weight to prove a case as the prosecution has the burden to prove the charges against a defendant beyond a reasonable doubt. It is ultimately up to the jury as they are the trier of facts, and the jury will decide what weight to give these facts based on the evidence presented." According to the indictment, the brothers would incapacitate the women before they were sexually assaulted and raped – sometimes alongside multiple men – with some of the attacks happening within hours of meeting the victims. "Often, the Alexander brothers drugged their victims before assaulting them, preventing them from fighting back or escaping," the indictment reads. The three men allegedly operated the scheme from New York City and Miami, Florida, centering the assaults around where their homes and businesses were located. Prosecutors allege that immediately following the attacks, the brothers would "sometimes [offer] the victims material items, including travel, concert tickets, and other luxury experiences." "When prosecuting a sex trafficking case in federal court, prosecutors must demonstrate that 'force, threats of force, fraud or coercion' were used to compel the victim to engage in a sex act," Hyman told Fox News Digital. "However, if the victim is a minor, this specific proof is not required. The prosecution must still prove a defendant knowingly recruited the minor for a commercial sex act, but not particularly through force, fraud or coercion." Alon Alexander's attorney, Howard Srebnick, pointed to his client's willingness to sit for a polygraph test and the subsequent results. "Alon pled not guilty to all counts, including the newly-added count ten accusing him of drugging a woman to have sex with her," Srebnick said in a statement to Fox News Digital. "On January 13, 2025, a retired FBI polygraph examiner tested Alon while in jail. Alon was asked if he ever had sex with any woman he knew had been covertly given drugs, which Alon denied. The polygraph examiner opined that Alon passed the lie detector test, finding 'no significant reactions indicative of deception' by Alon." One of Tal's attorneys, Deanna Paul, referred to previous statements his defense team had provided to Fox News Digital. In March his lawyers said the superseding indictment "changes nothing." "It's a reheated version of the same case—and still does not include conduct that amounts to federal sex trafficking," Paul and Milton Williams said at the time. "The government is trying to stretch a statute beyond recognition to fit a narrative, not a crime." Oren Alexander's attorney did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment. They are currently being held at Brooklyn's Metropolitan Detention Center as they await trial. If convicted of the federal charges, the brothers could face the possibility of 15 years to life in prison.
