electrician in Rock Hill, SC

ROCK HILL, S.C. — York County detectives are investigating after a reported drug overdose inside a local high school.

Channel 9′s Tina Terry spoke with deputies about how the student was able to get a hold of drugs while on campus.

Stephanie Segura told Channel 9 that she lives across the street from Rock Hill High School. She said she was at home on Thursday when a 15-year-old boy reportedly overdosed in a classroom.

“We saw a bunch of cops, but I didn’t think nothing of it,” Segura said.

ALSO READ: Sheriff warns against illegal drug use after 4 overdoses in Chesterfield County

According to the incident report, a school resource officer was informed that a student “...had possibly taken a narcotic that resulted in him overdosing.” The report further stated that the student had “...labored breathing and was not responsive.”

The SRO then gave the student two doses of Narcan to revive him.

“Narcan is an opioid reversal drug. In most cases, one works. In this situation, he had to use two,” said Trent Faris, Public Information Officer for the York County Sheriff’s Office.

Detectives said that the student threw up “a white pill” after he was revived. He later admitted to also taking a blue pill but would not say what that pill was.

They are testing the white pill in order to find out if it was behind the student’s medical emergency.

“When he recovered from the opioid overdose, our SRO asked him, ‘Where’d you get it?’ ‘How’d you get it?’ The normal questions you would ask. And that person would not tell us at this time,” Faris explained.

While deputies continue to investigate, treatment specialists who help people overcome opioid addiction said calls to help juveniles addicted to drugs have increased by 30 to 40%.

“We get phone calls from the hospital, DSS, schools, and parents of kids who are 16, 17, or 15 saying that my child or this child has overdosed two or three times,” said Brandon Sipp, Assistant Program Director for Lancaster Treatment Specialists.

Channel 9′s Tina Terry spoke with the mother of the student who allegedly overdosed. She said she didn’t want to discuss the incident; however, she was grateful for the fast response of school officials to save her son.

The York County Sheriff’s Office said this is the first overdose reported at Rock Hill High School. However, last school year, one was reported at Northwestern High School in Rock Hill.

VIDEO: Sheriff warns against illegal drug use after 4 overdoses in Chesterfield County

In a notice filed last week, Delaware, Ohio-based packaging producer Greif informed the state of South Carolina its plans to close its tube and core manufacturing site in Rock Hill.

The company submitted a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notice, or WARN letter, to the state July 5, and according to a report from South Carolina Public Radio, Grief Director of Corporate Communications T.J. Struhs says the closure is part of a consolidation of five of the company’s facilities in the Charlotte, North Carolina, area. Rock Hill is located approximately 25 miles south of Charlotte.

The South Carolina WARN Report shows layoffs beginning Sept. 3 and the official permanent closure date as Oct. 30. Struhs tells South Carolina Public Radio that 90 employees will be impacted by the closure but that Greif is trying to find new positions for all affected.

Recycled paperboard tubes and cores are manufactured at the Rock Hill site, which was one of more than 80 facilities Greif acquired when it purchased Caraustar Industries Inc. in 2019 in a deal worth $1.8 billion.

Grief does not mention which of its other sites are part of the consolidation plant in the Charlotte area, but the company has had a “challenging” first half of the year. Despite having the second-best overall first quarter in its history and second-best second-quarter earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA), Grief reports decreased financial performance in a number of segments, particularly its Paper Packaging & Services (PPS) division.

Low mill volumes impacted Greif’s PPS division in back-to-back quarters. The company reports a $19.4 million decline in gross profit, a $12.5 million decline in operating profit and a $12.5 million decline in adjusted EBITDA in the second quarter.

The company took 77,000 tons worth of economic downtime in the second quarter in the PPS division after taking 94,000 tons worth in the first quarter, and Greif says tubes/cores and sheet demand are down double digits against 2022’s figures.

“Despite operating in an environment of ongoing demand uncertainties, our teams have remained agile and resolutely focused on delivering exceptional value to our shareholders,” Greif President and CEO Ole Rosgaard said during a second-quarter earnings call.

The team behind Rock Hill-based food truck Cibi! Cibi! will launch its first brick-and-mortar location, Elk Ave Tavern, in early 2024.

The Cibi! Cibi! food truck, run by owners Anthony Legatie and Hunter Newton, is well known for its variety of street foods including smash burgers, cheesesteaks and fried chicken.

But when doors open at Elk Ave Tavern, you can expect the atmosphere to be somewhat of a “casual neighborhood spot for locals.” Look for a menu consisting of modern comfort foods, with beer, wine and cocktails – all “at a fair price,” Elk Ave Tavern wrote via Instagram.

While Newton said, “there will inevitably be some overlap” with previous menu items from Cibi! Cibi! over the years, as its menu goes, Elk Ave Tavern will be a “completely separate concept from Cibi! Cibi!”

“While we’re still working on the specifics of the menu, we’re shooting for simple and approachable yet elevated pub style fare, changing seasonally, drawing from the classics and incorporating a wide variety of cooking techniques. Nonetheless, we definitely plan to have a banging burger,” Newton told CharlotteFive.

Named after its address at 125 Elk Ave., across from City Hall, the Elk Ave Tavern space was previously occupied by Rock Hill staple Kinch’s restaurant over 18 years, and more recently, Sweet Tea Café.

Elk Ave Tavern does not have a specific opening date yet. Its team is working with the City of Rock Hill on permitting for interior construction, including the addition of a 15-foot bar, while it’s also working with the Rock Hill’s Historic Board on permits for a covered patio on the Black Street side of the building.

“Our contractor is ready to begin construction on the interior as soon as we have the required permits, so we’re hoping to open our doors sometime winter of 2024, but we all know how these things go,” Newton said.

After its last day at Slow Play Brewing on Nov. 4, the team will continue to run the truck, as well as expand its local online ordering hours through DoorDash to keep its staff on payroll. Twisted Eats Food Truck, run by Kounter chef and owner Rob Masone, will take its place at the brewery.

“Though we’ve enjoyed it immensely,” Newton said, the food truck has been “limiting in a number of ways especially in the way of creativity and what can be practically executed consistently with a high standard for quality.”

“We can’t wait to see you in this space and hope to be serving you for many years to come,” a post on the Elk Ave Tavern Instagram said.

Location: 125 Elk Ave., Rock Hill SC, 29730

Cuisine: American, modern comfort food

Instagram: @elkavetavern

Post and Courier. October 23, 2023.

Editorial: SC early release requests need to be thoroughly vetted

There’s nothing wrong with occasionally releasing an inmate early when the S.C. Corrections Department, the local solicitor and a judge agree that the inmate provided such valuable assistance to the state that he deserves a reward. It’s not unlike entering into a plea agreement that reduces the amount of time inmates are sentenced to serve to begin with.

What’s wrong is when the judge does the whole thing in secret, in violation of state laws and the state constitution.

What’s wrong is when there’s no review of whether the information or assistance the prisoner provided was actually useful.

What’s wrong is when solicitors serve merely as a conduit to assist a favored defense attorney rather than exercising the same sort of prosecutorial judgment we rely on them to use every day.

Assuming that our judges are paying attention, the S.C. Supreme Court has addressed the first problem with a powerful order telling them in no uncertain terms that they have to comply with constitutional and statutory requirements that our courtrooms be open and that victims be notified before inmates are released.

But that does nothing to ensure that defense attorneys supply evidence of the required “substantial assistance” their clients provided to help prosecute other criminals or protect correctional officers from attack. It does nothing to ensure that prosecutors examine that evidence to make sure it holds up. Nor does it do anything to make sure prosecutors vouch for the recommendation to release prisoners, rather than simply rubber stamping it and washing their hands of the matter, as the solicitor did in at least one early release case — and as another prosecutor might have done in another.

So we’re intrigued by Gov. Henry McMaster’s order directing solicitors to inform the attorney general at least 10 days in advance of filing a petition to release an inmate early. The order came just three days after the governor ordered a major reform of the state’s magistrate selection process — an order that’s on much firmer legal ground but much more surprising, since it signals a shift in the deference governors long have given individual senators.

Solicitors don’t work for the governor; it’s the attorney general who has authority under the constitution over their prosecutorial decisions. And Attorney General Alan Wilson had already told 5th Circuit Solicitor Byron Gipson he couldn’t file a second petition for the early release of convicted murderer Jeroid Price, whose secret release earlier this year prompted the Supreme Court’s order reversing the decision by a retiring judge and spelling out the law for other judges. But in keeping with the way the job has been handled by him and most previous attorneys general — including Mr. McMaster — Mr. Wilson decided against issuing an order to all the solicitors, with whom he’s been working well on efforts to overhaul the state’s legislator-controlled system of selecting judges.

Mr. McMaster based his order on a law that requires all government officials to immediately provide him with “ any information desired by him in relation to their respective affairs or activities.” It’s a stretch of that law to be sure, and we don’t see how he could enforce it. But it’s not clear that his order doesn’t fall under the information law, and we’ve already seen two cases where local solicitors have made irresponsible decisions, whose results would not have been known if not for reporting by The Post and Courier. So there’s clearly a problem that the court’s order doesn’t fully resolve.

We elect solicitors, and those solicitors are the ones responsible for prosecuting criminals. What the voters in one circuit might find acceptable could be different from what voters in another circuit would find acceptable. So our concern is less that solicitors are making the wrong decisions about these cases but that, as we’ve seen in one and probably two cases, they aren’t making decisions at all. Even if the governor doesn’t have the power to enforce his order, the idea of looping in the attorney general makes a lot of sense. We encourage solicitors to go along.

END

This story was originally published October 26, 2023, 7:12 AM.

Indian Land parents are making their case for new schools in Lancaster County’s panhandle. Ultimately, voters across the district will decide.

The Lancaster County School District began work months earlier this year to determine school needs, costs and possible options to bring up in a bond referendum. A board subcommittee targeted a late March 2024 referendum date.

Subcommittee chair and board member Melvin Stroble said public input on priorities is key, which led to a new stakeholder committee.

“The facility needs committee was a community driven group of folks who came together to look at what the potential needs were for the school district facilities across Lancaster County,” Stroble said.

Fred Witherspoon is one of the 14 members on that committee. A recent survey sent throughout the district aimed to help that group narrow down needs. Witherspoon is a product of the school district who said even his stakeholder group shouldn’t move forward alone with a list of improvements.

“Once we get feedback from everyone, they either confirm that we are right or bring up some interesting things that we may have overlooked,” Witherspoon said. “So it was indeed an eye opening experience.”

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Mary Beth Braham with architectural firm LS3P presented recommendations from the facility needs committee to the school board. The committee based those recommendations on stakeholder meetings and results from the recent community survey.

“They kind of came up with those top needs that were recurring over and over again,” Braham said.

There were about 850 survey responses. Almost 540 of them were from the Indian Land panhandle area. About three-quarters of Indian Land responses came from parents.

Panhandle recommendations include a new high school and new elementary school in the northernmost area of the district. Of note, Indian Land already has some of the newest schools in the district.

The new Indian Land High School opened in 2021. It was funded through the same 2016 referendum that built a new elementary school in Indian Land. Harrisburg Elementary School only dates back to 2014 and several long-time school facilities in Indian Land have changed school levels to adapt to growth.

Indian Land also has massive population growth, unprecedented in other parts of the county and, largely, throughout the region.

Other Indian Land items on the needs list include renovations at the middle and intermediate schools, athletic support space at the high school and a car loop extension at Indian Land Elementary School.

As with recommendations in other parts of the county, the presentation to the board didn’t prioritize needs against one another. There also weren’t price tags attached, or an indication how many of the needs might yet make a referendum ballot.

Most of the survey responses that weren’t from Indian Land came from the Lancaster area. About 200 responses came from teachers. It was the same in the much smaller response area of Kershaw.

Only the smaller response area of Buford saw mostly parents respond, at more than a third of responses, the way Indian Land did.

Lancaster responses call for a new elementary school to replace Clinton Elementary School, and renovations at Lancaster High School, South Middle School, Brooklyn Springs Elementary School and the Discovery School, plus library expansion at McDonald Green Elementary School.

Kershaw requested a new 1,000-student elementary school and renovations at Andrew Jackson High School and Andrew Jackson Middle School, including the addition of a high school gym.

Buford added a new middle school to replace its existing one and high school renovations.

All four areas had various support facility upgrades on their lists. District-wide needs include more cameras, activity buses and a satellite maintenance facility in the panhandle area.

The school board didn’t vote on the recommendations list. They haven’t yet voted to set up a bond referendum or on details related to it. The board would need to bring on bond counsel and go through its typical process, including a public hearing, to approve any bond referendum date or question.