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Miami Herald
03-08-2025
- Miami Herald
Ty'Ran, not Tyren: Law enforcement mistake leads to 67-day nightmare in jail
With no way of knowing what he was walking into, Ty'Ran Dixon stepped off a flight from Europe at the airport in Boston 10 months ago, thinking he'd quickly be going home to South Carolina. Home. There's no word like it. Going home. There's no experience like it. Or so Dixon thought. The football player didn't know that a case of mistaken identity would soon lead to his wrongful arrest, that he'd spend the next 67 days behind bars, 21 of them in solitary confinement, that no amount of pacing, pushups or pass rush drills in claustrophobic spaces can keep a 27-year-old mind and a 295-pound body fit, that feelings about home itself could change, be twisted, corrupted, ruined by poor police work that would make Dixon consider ending his own life and, when his ordeal was finally over, make him return to Finland, not wanting to see America again. Law enforcement wanted him in the killing of a pregnant woman he'd never met, in Barnwell County, SC, where he'd never been, but Dixon didn't know that when he grabbed his bag from a bin and stepped off the flight that now divides his life into before and after. He was spotted and swarmed by a group of state police officers with multiple warrants for Ty'Ran Dixon's arrest even though the man implicated in the crime was named Tyren Dickson. They asked him for his passport, said he was wanted on several warrants, cuffed him, walked him to a room, rummaged through his luggage, advised him he wouldn't see a judge until the next morning, and drove him to a nearby jail. His first night of sleep was fitful, to say the least. Had Dixon done anything wrong? He had not. His nightmare was just beginning. Dixon went from being a chubby 10-year-old tying on his cleats for the first time to a graduate of Columbia High School and Newberry College in South Carolina, where he tore his ACL and meniscus and got a double major in sport management and exercise science, a minor in business administration and a master's degree in organizational development and leadership. He didn't realize his NFL dreams, but he didn't get discouraged. He played far from home for the Las Vegas Vipers in the XFL and then farther from home for the Lohja Crusaders in the Vaahteraliiga league in Finland, where he has lived for a couple years. On Sept. 30, 2024, he was headed home to Columbia for two weeks to see his mother and to Newberry for homecoming at the college where he was named all-conference for being such a fearsome defensive lineman. He was the defensive player of the year on his first Finnish team. Today, he is back in Finland, 28, playing football for a team in Helsinki and coaching kids who draw inspiration from his strength. He doesn't want to return to the U.S. though he imagines he'll return to see his mom. They talked daily when he was detained and talk almost every day now. 'I hate America now,' Dixon said by Zoom this week from Helsinki as he shared his complex thoughts about home. 'I want to start a life here. I don't want to be nowhere in the vicinity (of America). Period. 'Here it feels like home,' he said. 'Don't get me wrong. The States will always be home. My mindset has shifted after that whole experience. I don't want to be in the States. It is what it is. Here, I'm able to find a little bit of peace.' An 18-page lawsuit against the Barnwell County Sheriff's Office filed by Columbia lawyers Joseph McCulloch and Robert Goings lays out why peace of mind is so hard for Dixon to come by these days, citing, 'fundamental police investigative failures, and shoddy, incompetent, and utterly inexcusable actions' by the office. The suit says the office's false statements also subjected Dixon to ridicule, contempt, disgrace, suffering, anguish, horror, nervousness, grief, anxiety, worry, shock, humiliation, and shame.' A 12-page response from the sheriff's office asserts immunity, among other defenses, but this is not a simple mix-up. It's an error easily avoided, and seriously punishable. Not only are the two accused men's names different, they don't look similar. Both are Black and more than six feet tall. But Ty'Ran Tyrell Dixon is 6'3'' and 295 pounds. Tyren Rommel Dickson is 6'1'' and 180 pounds. Side-by-side photos appear in the lawsuit, which says Dickson 'looks nothing like Dixon, a fact easily determined by a simple exercise of fundamental police work.' Dixon was released on Dec. 6, not long after he finally arrived at the Barnwell County Sheriff's Office after stops in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Oklahoma and Georgia. He said he got an apology and a ride to his mother's house. He said she 'never hugged me that tight in her life.' Twenty-two days later, the sheriff announced Dickson had been arrested in the 2023 killing of 21-year-old Jasmine Roach and her unborn baby. Dickson's criminal case is proceeding in Barnwell County Second Judicial Circuit Court. Dixon's suit is in the court of common pleas. Barnwell County Sheriff Steven Griffith, elected in 2020 and re-elected last year while Dixon was being wrongfully detained, did not respond to requests for an interview or a statement about the case. In his office's court response, it says a photo lineup used to 'confirm the identity of the appropriate suspect' had 'inaccurate information unbeknownst' to the office. It also 'asserts it had no control' over Dixon's transportation once he was in the custody of U.S. marshals. It says repeatedly that once it realized the mistake, it 'quickly released' Dixon — as if 67 days is quick. Behind bars, the man who eats more for breakfast than many of us do in a day — a dozen eggs, bacon, two slices of wheat bread, yogurt and fruit with granola — went from more than 4,000 calories a day to far less, ate leftovers from other people's trays, lost 45 pounds, lost his mind. He couldn't sleep. He contemplated suicide. He started to hallucinate and wondered if he had killed the pregnant woman, as the Barnwell County Sheriff's Office alleged in its warrants, after an informant said someone with a name sounding like his — but not his — had done the crime. He often thought about George Stinney, an innocent 14-year-old Black child who the state of South Carolina executed in 1944, the youngest person legally executed in the U.S. that century. He also talked to God every day, was shown strength by Him, was shown kindness by fellow humans — in jumpsuits and uniforms — who told him to keep faith and keep fighting his injustice. He kept telling officials they had the wrong guy. 'They all say that,' came one response. 'Tell it to the judge,' came another. Who could blame him if he lost some of his faith in humanity. But his faith in God grew. He stayed in five detention centers in four states as part of the wrongful arrest that involved the Barnwell Sheriff's Office letting the U.S. Marshals Service return Dixon to South Carolina. At the first, he was given a Bible that he kept by his side until the third detention center took it from him. He was told inmates smoked pages of the Bible, and he wouldn't be allowed to keep its lifelines. 'Stay strong,' he scribbled on a scrap of paper. 'Don't let this be for nothing. God strength.' He still has the piece of paper. He still has that strength. He's more spiritual than ever. The 67 days that Dixon moved slowly closer to South Carolina are seared into his memory. Over 90 minutes on Zoom, Dixon relived a nightmare that would have broken the spirit of many of us. 'I'm a positive spirit,' he reflected. 'I'm a positive soul. I'm in there around darkness, great darkness. It took every piece of mental fortitude that I had from all of the years that I've been playing football and going through life. That took every ounce that I had left.' Once too ashamed to talk about it, he now realizes he has nothing to be ashamed of. 'Of course I want to be compensated, yes,' he said of his lawsuit. 'They need to take some accountability for that. At least give me something back, but I won't ever get my life back. 'I never had anxiety before this,' he added. 'I'm having anxiety attacks now, PTSD, having nightmares that people are stabbing me. They feel vivid. Even going in the elevator out here, I freak out sometimes because it reminded me of that situation. I can't be in a small car anymore. I get sweaty and panicking and stuff.' This almost unbelievable story is his to tell, and he is telling it now, talking to media outlets in South Carolina and in Finland since his lawsuit was filed in April and the case has begun to proceed. 'Deep down in my heart, I know I'm never going to be the same again,' Dixon told me. 'It stole a piece of the drive from me.' Football keeps that drive alive, though. 'The thing that I embed myself in is the kids and the people that I can help, that I can affect in a positive manner,' he said. 'Whenever I get to tripping out or I'm starting to have anxiety, I do private sessions for kids out here…. I am embedded in the kids, honestly.' He helps them because they helped him, he said. 'I'm broken, and I feel like people are using my energy to help them because of what I went through, because of the strength that I had to sustain while being there,' he said. 'People look at it as an inspiration, especially these kids out here. They always ask me how did you make it out of that prison and how are you back playing football so fast. I'm like, man, if you guys only knew, it's because of y'all.' In other words, Dixon hasn't given up. He's giving back. The Barnwell County Sheriff's Office should be forced to do right by Dixon, who was so clearly wronged and has so clearly suffered because of the office's abject failure to get a name right. For now, what may give Dixon comfort is the knowledge that anyone who hears his story will remember his name and that home is where your heart is full when they call it. Matthew T. Hall is McClatchy's South Carolina opinion editor.
Yahoo
20-07-2025
- Climate
- Yahoo
Burdoin Mountain Fire in Columbia River Gorge prompts Level 3 ‘Go Now' evacuations
PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) – A wildfire has erupted in the area near the Columbia River Gorge and prompted Level 3 'Go Now' evacuations, officials said. The Burdoin Mountain Fire is burning east of Bingen, Wash. near Milepost 68, according to the U.S. Forest Service. It is located in Klickitat County near the city of White Salmon, the Washington State Fire Marshal's Office said. Close Thanks for signing up! Watch for us in your inbox. Subscribe Now The Burdoin Fire started just before 2:30 p.m. The fire is now estimated to be 2,000 acres and growing, the State Fire Marshal said on Friday evening. Initial reports earlier in the day said the fire was 250 acres. Officials say westbound Hwy 14 is closed at Milepost 68. A map of the evacuation areas can be seen below. The Level 3 evacuations are for those east of Bingen: South Highway 14 near milepost 68, north to Forbes, east to Courtney Rd. Level 2 'Be Set evacuations are for those south at Forbes Rd to north at Bates Rd, West at Tunnel Rd, east at end of Bristol Rd. Additionally, those south at Bates Rd to north at Billette Rd, west at Sandborn Rd. and east at Acne/Crystal Rd. are under Level 1 'Be Ready' evacuation levels. In addition, an evacuation shelter has been established at Columbia High School in White Salmon, officials said. The fire has also caused closures at SR 14. 'Both directions of SR 14 near Bingen are closed between milepost 66 and Courtney Road (milepost 70), in Klickitat County due to a brush fire. There is no estimated time for reopening,' officials said. 'You talk about the fires but to actually see it in real life, and to know our state is on fire is a scary thing,' said Heather Meier, who was visiting the area when the fire broke out. Meier said she and her family had to return to their home in Kent, Washington, via taking detours through Oregon's I-84. The cause of the fire is still under investigation. Stay with KOIN 6 News as this story develops. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
05-06-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Legendary DeKalb basketball coach accused of spanking players
A longtime high school basketball coach is out of a job after allegations he spanked some of his players with his shoe. Channel 2's Tom Jones reported Columbia High School's former head basketball coach, Dr. Phillip McCrary, is out of a job. Advertisement [DOWNLOAD: Free WSB-TV News app for alerts as news breaks] McCrary was a legend at the school, with the gym being named after him. He won hundreds of games during his coaching career. Video believed to have led to the end of McCrary's employment with DeKalb County Schools was shared by a parent of a former player who is no longer at the school. She asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation. 'When I saw the video, I was heartbroken,' she said. 'I was heartbroken because we trusted this man.' She says the video shows McCrary telling a player to lower his pants in a hotel room while the team was in the Bahamas for a tournament in November. Advertisement She says the coach then hits the player forcibly on his backside with his shoe several times. 'Then he says, 'Why is it happening?' And then the young man said, 'Because I invited a girl up to the room,' the mother said. She says another player was also hit with the shoe. Jones went to McCrary's home and asked if he had a second to talk. McCrary said no. Jones asked if he had a comment but didn't get a response. A spokesperson for the school district said they couldn't comment on personnel matters and said the safety of students is its highest priority. She went on to say McCrary is no longer employed by the district as of Monday. Advertisement This mother says letting him go is the right decision. 'That's humiliating. It's not OK,' she said. The mother says after her son left the school recently, he felt empowered to come forward about what happened. She says he was in that room and the incident took a toll on his mental health. [SIGN UP: WSB-TV Daily Headlines Newsletter]
Yahoo
04-04-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Columbia High Senior named News 19 Student of the Week
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (WHNT) — For this week's News 19 Student of the Week, our Ellie Byrd headed over to Columbia High School to visit Senior Karen Earle! Have you ever heard the saying, 'I don't know how she does it all.'? Mill Creek Elementary second grader named News 19 Student of the Week Well, that certainly comes to mind when you think of Karen. She has been able to accomplish so much in her lifetime, from being an honor student to graduating from Calhoun Community College at the same time she graduates high school. If that didn't seem hard enough, she has held a job at Walmart for almost 3 years now as well. 'She really is so deserving, you won girl. I mean for as hard as she works and the time she puts in for her future, I couldn't think of anyone better to be nominated for this,' said one of her best friends. Not everyone is blessed to have a support system like Karen, but with her heart and drive, sometimes people feel drawn to her! Karen hopes to become a Mechanical Engineer one day, and she wants to travel and explore the world to broaden her knowledge even more. While Karen is super special to her teachers and students at the school, she is also pretty special to us here at News 19! Her sister, Karrington Earle produces our 4 o'clock newscast. She is a good big sister and role model because both of them are outstanding a few short weeks, Karen will walk through the halls of Columbia High one last time, but we know the legacy she leaves behind will remain. If you would like to nominate a student of the week email us at studentoftheweek@ and tune in every Thursday at 6 am, 6 pm and 10 pm to see who made the grade! Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
New York Times
15-02-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
The Parking Lot Frisbee Game That Started in 1968 Is Still Going Strong
On hallowed ground in Maplewood, N.J., a small group of impassioned athletes braved the January cold to fling a disc. Some had gray hair beneath wool caps. Some were in street clothes. One wore shorts and a beard to rival Father Time's. They can be found there most Thursday nights, even in the bleakest midwinter, their sneakers slapping out a staccato beat that echoes the invention of their sport, almost 60 years ago, on the same spot: the parking lot of Columbia High School. As the players warmed up, a group of high school students wandered by. They noted the camera flash from a news photographer and, as they surveyed the curious scene, wondered what was up. 'Oh,' one of them said, with a teenager's almost audible eye roll. 'The stupid Frisbee rock.' In a corner of that nondescript parking lot sits a stone the size of a backyard grill, with a small plaque commemorating the birthplace of Ultimate Frisbee in 1968, and the three students credited with inventing it. The teenagers did not know it, but two of the guys in the game that night have a direct connection to the players mentioned on the plaque, the founders of Ultimate Frisbee as we know it. Joe Barbanel, 70, and his good friend Ed Summers, 71, both grandfathers, have been playing the sport in this parking lot for more than half a century. But history is not what compels these Frisbee folks. 'Like Peter Pan, I don't have to grow up,' said Mr. Barbanel, who has matured enough to be a part owner of a chemical manufacturing company in Short Hills, N.J. 'I did it with my friends way back then, and I'm doing it with my friends now.' Mr. Barbanel and Mr. Summers do not claim to have been present at the actual founding of Ultimate, which is essentially football with a Frisbee and no tackling. Credit for that generally goes to three older chaps in the Columbia High School class of 1970: Joel Silver, who later became a Hollywood film producer; Jonny Hines; and Bernard Hellring Jr., known as Buzzy, who died in a car crash in 1971. But it's unlikely that anyone has played more Frisbee in this parking lot than Mr. Barbanel and Mr. Summers (class of '72). They were the younger disciples who helped spread the game far beyond its initial home turf of Maplewood, and they still play most weeks. 'We definitely had a religious fervor about it back then,' said Mr. Summers, a retired AT&T project manager and board member of the online Ultimate Hall of Fame. 'And still do,' he added. 'I love the arc of the disc. I love catching, throwing and making a quick cut to evade a defender.' Flying disc toys are said to have been around since the 1930s, and campground games have been played up and down the East Coast since the 1940s, according to Tony Leonardo, the author of 'Ultimate: The Greatest Sport Ever Invented by Man.' Mr. Leonardo, who founded the Notre Dame team in 1991 (Ultimate is generally a club sport at colleges, though it is taken very seriously), is also making a documentary about the Maplewood parking lot, which he said is underrecognized, even by many of the estimated seven million Ultimate players around the world. 'The fact that our entire sport can be traced to this crummy rock with this small plaque at a parking lot is a little bit of an insult,' he said. 'It's insufficient.' According to the legend, Mr. Silver went to a summer camp in Massachusetts in 1968 and learned a similar game from a counselor who played it at Amherst College. Mr. Silver brought it back to Columbia High School, tweaked it and, according to Mr. Leonardo, pushed it on the student council, almost as a gag or a fun form of cheeky performance art. The first game was played between the student council and the student newspaper staff. 'He did a lot of it as a shtick,' Mr. Leonardo said. The parking lot became the early arena because of its lights, but otherwise, the sport is a field game. Winter pickup games in Maplewood are still played in the lot for the same reason as many decades ago — it is well lit. One of the players in last month's game was Michael Brenner, a Maplewood native who went on to win consecutive national Ultimate championships for the University of Pittsburgh in 2012 and 2013. Later, he had offers to play in a professional league with referees. But he prefers the traditional game, where disputed calls are hashed out by players, overseen by 'observers.' One of the key moments in the initial branding of Ultimate Frisbee was when the trio of founders recorded all the rules in a booklet, printed in 1970. In addition to establishing the run of play — a foul may be a physical action 'sufficient to arouse the ire' of an opponent — the first rule book also included a section on referees, with the key words 'honor system,' thereby codifying the essential spirit of sportsmanship and honesty. Ultimate largely rejects commercialism, and though it embraces competition and athleticism, an encouraging word to an opponent is far more common than ill-tempered invective. But it's no hippie sport. 'We are engineers, intellectuals, with athletes mixed in,' Mr. Leonardo, the Ultimate historian, said. 'A little alternative, liberal, freethinking, very smart-alecky. Collegiate.' So, instead of doing it for money, Mr. Brenner plays pickup in street clothes on winter nights in a parking lot in suburban New Jersey. 'There is something pure about it,' he said. 'It's the coolest thing in the world to still play here.' If Ultimate was a shtick for the inventors, for Mr. Barbanel, Mr. Summers and their cohort it was sport, and maybe a way of life. They contacted other local high school students, told them about the game and handed out rule books. They even started a league — the New Jersey Frisbee Conference — and made a pact to start teams at their future colleges. 'It was always practice, practice, practice,' Mr. Summers said. 'And now, 50 years later, I'm still practicing.' Sometimes in the winter it can be hard to find enough players, and once or twice Mr. Barbanel was left alone to run laps and do solo throwing drills in the cold. But during the pickup game last month, there were enough for a spirited three-on-three. The roster also included Mr. Summers; Andrew Warner, 40, another Columbia alumnus, who plays in shorts regardless of the temperature; Joe Crobak, who played at Lafayette College; and Mark Dowd, a marketing executive. They played for about two hours, pausing several times to hunt for a stick long enough to retrieve the disc from the east branch of the frigid Rahway River after an errant throw. The players also stopped to wave in unison at the New Jersey Transit trains that passed by every quarter-hour or so. They have been doing that without fail since the first games in the parking lot decades ago. 'Sometimes the conductors blow the horn,' Mr. Warner said. As the players tossed precision hammer throws, made deft cuts and always complimented an opponent on a good play, Steve Campione, an executive for an agricultural firm, walked his dog across the street. He said he had seen the game most Thursday nights lately, even the week before, when it was 20 degrees. Asked if it seemed a bit crazy to brave freezing temperatures to play Frisbee at night, Mr. Campione, who has adult children, said no, assuming the players were students. He was then informed that they were all at least 30 and there were two grandfathers in the game. 'Oh, now, that's a little crazy,' he said with a laugh. Then he reconsidered. 'Once you fall in love with a sport, you want to keep playing. They're still out there having fun.'
