Plumbers in West Ashley, SC

Charleston County deputies seized enough illicit fentanyl from a West Ashley apartment to kill every person in Charleston and Colleton counties, and more, according to Sheriff Kristin Graziano.

“This single seizure of fentanyl, this 2½ pounds, is enough fentanyl to provide a lethal dose to every person in the city and county of Charleston, and Colleton County, and add another 50,000 people to that,” she said at a press conference April 24, five days after the drug bust. The two counties have a combined population of about 500,000 people. “That’s how big the seizure was. And that’s how important this is to this community.”

The synthetic opioid is 50 times stronger than heroin, and just 2 milligrams is considered a lethal dose. Fentanyl accounted for more than two-thirds of all fatal overdoses in 2021, killing nearly 1,500 people statewide, according to the latest data from the Department of Health and Environmental Control.

That year in Charleston County alone, 183 people fatally overdosed, according to Coroner Bobbi Jo O’Neal, who joined Graziano and other local leaders for the announcement.

“In 2022, that number skyrocketed to 240. We are on target for 2023 to beat that number again, which is not something we should be proud of,” O’Neal said. “One thing I would say is that there is hope.”

She held up a red bag containing Narcan, a nasal spray that can reverse the affects of an opioid overdose. The Coroner’s Office and the jail provide the overdose antidote “no questions asked,” the sheriff and coroner said. Both leaders also championed drug treatment and recovery services available through the Charleston Center and nonprofit Wake Up Carolina.

“Our country is in the midst of a public health, public safety crisis involving opioid addiction. I think that is not new to folks. But I think you need to realize that Charleston is not immune. We’re not immune to this crisis,” Graziano said. “This operation that was uncovered by law enforcement is a clear sign that we are clearly not immune to this.”

On April 19, deputies were attempting to arrest a man who had failed to appear in court for a 2019 case, when they found what Graziano described as “a significant drug-trafficking operation” in the apartment off Folly Road Boulevard where he had been staying. The man had fled — deputies believe he had jumped from a fourth-floor balcony to elude capture — but returned to the apartment complex later that day and was arrested.

Meanwhile, a search of the apartment netted the powdered fentanyl, about 2¾ pounds of marijuana, 682 Xanax pills, two pill presses, an AK-style rifle and two handguns. On the man, deputies found $7,700 in cash.

It marks the largest seizure of the deadly drug by the Charleston County Sheriff’s Office to date.

Tyrell Javon Sistrunk faces two charges for drug distribution, a trafficking charge, and three gun offenses based on the search.

Sistrunk was initially arrest on June 3, 2019, after leading deputies in a car chase through North Charleston. In the car, which Sistrunk abandoned to flee on foot, authorities found a child, cocaine and a pistol. Once deputies caught up to Sistrunk, he resisted arrest, elbowing one in the face, according to arrest warrant affidavits.

At that time, Sistrunk was charged with child endangerment, assaulting an officer, distribution of cocaine and a weapons offense.

On June 5, 2019, he posted $65,000 bail and was released. On March 2, a circuit judge issued bench warrants when Sistrunk failed to appear in court, prompting the deputies to search the West Ashley apartment where he was apparently living under an alias.

He is currently being held in the Charleston County jail.

CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCBD) – The South Carolina Department of Transportation (SCDOT) will close southbound lanes on the West Ashley Bridge overnight beginning May 10.

All lanes going from Downtown to West Ashley will close nightly from 9:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. as crews complete construction work.

Traffic will be detoured.

The work is expected to take one to two weeks.

Copyright 2023 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Shane Melton, who lives in West Ashley, received a big surprise during what should have been a routine visit to the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Published: Fri Mar 24 2023|Updated: Mon Mar 27 2023

CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCSC) - Shane Melton, who lives in West Ashley, received a big surprise during what should have been a routine visit to the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Melton learned he is a dead man walking.

“There’s just nothing I can do,” he says.

The Social Security Administration incorrectly declared him dead, he says. He discovered this when he went to renew his driver’s license. Instead, he was shuffled into a back room and was accused of impersonating a dead man and stealing his identity, Melton says.

“They started interrogating me saying I was deceased and told me they’re going to call the cops on me,” he says. “They confiscated my ID, so I left.”

Melton says this initially didn’t seem like a major issue, but then he was laid off from his job.

“This has upended our entire lives,” his wife, Morgan Key, says.

Because the government considers him dead, Melton says companies won’t hire him. The family even had to move in with his parents to cut costs.

“He’s done interviews, job interviews, and everything,” Key says. “He’s doing everything that he can to get that job but they just can’t hire him legally.”

Being incorrectly declared dead can cause a lengthy list of problems, according to attorney Mark Bringardner.

“That’s going to prevent you from being able to take out a loan, apply for a job, pass any sort of background check, and your credit score will instantly go to zero,” he says. “So, that will present a whole host of challenges that can’t be fixed overnight and will take several months, if not longer, to fix between submitting the paperwork to the social security administration, as well as the credit score company to restore your credit.”

This issue is not uncommon, Bringardner says.

“It’s estimated this happens between 6,000 to 12,000 times a year or more, so that’s roughly 20 to 30 people a day,” he says. “Usually that occurs because of a clerical error at the Social Security Administration office, a hospital, a doctor’s office, or somebody filling out a form incorrectly and checking the wrong box.”

Catching and correcting the problem quickly is key, Bringardner says.

“Anyone who’s been wrongfully declared dead by the social security administration should contact them immediately and try to submit the paperwork,” he says.

But Melton says he’s gone to the social security office three times with various paperwork. He says the issue is the items the Social Security Administration can use to prove he’s alive either require a valid ID to obtain, like a passport or certified medical records, or only apply to certain people, such as military records or a church membership.

Melton says he doesn’t have an ID, any of the other documents or a path forward—leaving him frustrated and trying to fix what seems like an unfixable mistake he didn’t make.

“It can happen to anybody,” he says. “I never thought it would happen to me until I go to the DMV one day and boom, I’m dead. There’s nothing I can do about it. I didn’t cause the problem and they’re pretty much making me fix the problem when it’s impossible fix.”

The Social Security Administration did not respond to a request for comment.

Some additional advice from Bringardner: make sure you’re periodically checking your credit report to ensure this same mistake hasn’t happened to you. If it does, be prepared to involve a lawyer to help sort things out, especially your credit.

Copyright 2023 WCSC. All rights reserved.

Environmentalists and volunteers went to work in West Ashley to restore some marshland and fix ongoing water problems in the area.

Published: Thu Mar 23 2023

CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCSC) - Environmentalists and volunteers went to work in West Ashley to restore some marshland and fix ongoing water problems in the area.

Volunteers helping SCDNR, the Charleston Waterkeeper and the South Carolina Aquarium worked for hours over the course of five days. They moved and dug out mud by hand to build a new water inlet near the Ashleyville and Historic Maryville neighborhood.

Charleston Waterkeeper Staff Scientist and Volunteer Coordinator Cheryl Carmack says it has been a great few days seeing people come together and learn about the program and the neighborhood.

“This is a historic neighborhood,” Carmack said. “So it’s exciting to come out here and help daylight this creek and get volunteers involved in every step of the process and to make such a huge impact for our water quality in the Ashley River.”

Environmental workers say the neighbors came to them when they realized the marsh was dying to see what could be done. Ashleyville residents were worried they would lose the valuable natural resources. Now, environmentalists are trying something new to help.

Michael Hodges is a Wildlife Biologist at SCDNR. He also manages the South Carolina Oyster Shell Dropoff Recycling Program there. He says the marsh is suffering from hurricane destruction and drought dry-up. Going forward, the channels will help retain water, and give incoming water a place to go.

“This is not something that has been done in South Carolina through hand excavation of new tidal channels,” Hodges explains. “Which is fancy words for moving mud, about 100 feet of new tidal channel which will be between two and six inches deep from front to back.”

One small scoop at a time, bucket by bucket, the volunteers are hoping to make a big impact on the marsh.

“It will help to combat with the projected sea level rise that we’re going to see here in South Carolina,” Hodges says. “By planting more marsh grass in here, that can actually increase the surface elevation of the shoreline. It can help with a little bit of flooding that could take place.”

Work wrapped on one inlet Thursday, but the groups will be back to plant marsh grass this year and continue digging two more channels within the next few years.

Sara McDonald, the director of conservation at the South Carolina Aquarium, says their team has been involved on this project for years, helping with the paperwork and grant writing to make it happen. She explains that a lot of their work happens outside the office.

“We work with communities and empower them to collect data and connect data with decision makers to help create solutions to problems such as plastic pollution, coastal flooding as a result of sea level rise and climate change,” McDonald says.

Their work with the marsh in Ashleyville is far from over, with more plans to plant marsh grass and dig channels. Hodges says it will be exciting to see how the project plays out over the next couple years.

A federal grant from wildlife and fisheries is funding parts of the project.

Copyright 2023 WCSC. All rights reserved.

Nothing has been announced or finalized, but the early word is that one of Charleston’s most high-profile projects might not get built because the bids are in and are (not shockingly) much higher than expected.

So the long-planned stand-alone bike and pedestrian bridge linking the West Ashley Greenway with peninsular Charleston is now very much in doubt.

The price tag already had ballooned from about $22 million — the initial estimate when the city received an $18.1 million federal BUILD grant in 2019 that was expected to cover the vast majority of the new bridge’s price tag. When it rose to $40 million, S.C. Secretary of Transportation Christy Hall and others rallied and found the extra money to keep it on track.

But the new gap could be much larger, raising the issue of how much is too much. That question undoubtedly will be answered with more detail in the days to come, once the bid process has fully run its course and the picture is finally clear.

The possibility that the final number might be, no pun intended, a bridge too far should surprise no one. It’s the same story — costs rising faster than construction timetables — that has defined the most recent chapter of the decades-long saga to extend Interstate 526 from West Ashley onto James Island. Inflation doesn’t discriminate.

The expected bike-ped bridge got many people’s hopes up, but there’s another option that’s actually almost as good to provide safe biking and pedestrian access between West Ashley and downtown: converting one of four northbound lanes on the T. Allen Legare Jr. Bridge. And that could be done at a fraction of the price, even in this inflationary world we now live in.

The cost would be manageable in the financial sense at least. But unless officials do a better job than they did last time explaining the proposal, the political price would be high.

Charleston pivoted to a stand-alone bridge in the first place after public pressure caused some local politicians to back away from a plan to convert a lane on the northbound bridge. That public pressure was driven by a fundamental misunderstanding, which no one ever corrected, about how the lane conversion would affect the traffic flow.

The lane conversion was tested for a few weeks, and it seemed to work fine. I noticed no delays, but admittedly I wasn’t often driving over this bridge during the maw of the morning rush hour — the only time losing the lane would create a slight delay. Even then, the delay would affect only those driving toward U.S. Highway 17 from Folly Road, where traffic would now have to merge into one lane before reaching the bridge. Currently, cars coming from Highway 61 and Savannah Highway already merge into one lane before the bridge.

Still, that was enough to weaken the resolve of city and county officials who had invested in converting the lane; they backed off instead, dealing a big blow to local cycling advocates who have long considered the lack of a safe bike-ped crossing over the Ashley River here their No. 1 priority. The blow didn’t last too long, though, as the unexpected news of the $18.1 million grant seemed to assure that the crossing would be built after all — in a way that conceivably wouldn’t inconvenience anyone.

If the bridge plan does fall through, the lane conversion should be put back on track. What people need to realize is that motorists’ speed crossing from West Ashley into downtown on this bridge isn’t dictated by its number of lanes but by the stoplights awaiting them downtown — and the availability of downtown streets to accept the traffic.

Those streets aren’t going to be widened, so whether you have three lanes of traffic heading north over the river or 10 lanes, drivers are still going to face the same queue to get to Bee Street, Lockwood Boulevard, Spring Street and the Crosstown. The traffic over the bridge flows freely: Travel times are lengthened by the inability of the peninsula to accommodate the waves of cars and trucks heading that way.

During the earlier debate, I often wondered why so many cared about preserving a fourth traffic lane northbound when the three-lane southbound Highway 17 bridge works just fine. We might need to consider that question again.

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