--:-- Valerie Borlein: A word of warning. This series contains descriptions of violence and strong language, including unbleeped curse words. Please be advised.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Previously, on Camp Swamp Road. I've got pictures of him aiming the gun at us, everything. He's about to put the gun out again. Sir, this guy aims that gun at me. We're going to have to shoot him. There is a guy that is waving a gun in front of me trying to shoot at my car. And the other one's beside us. He's all over the road. And I look at my cousin. I'm saying, either Scott's been murdered or he's murdered somebody. What's going on? And no one will tell us. He shot at us. Partner, we're good. You're good. Don't worry about it. Things happen. I don't understand this one.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: The lead investigator assigned to the Scott Spivey case is Detective Alan Jones. This is for the audio recording. For the phone call with Mr. Byron and Deborah Spivey, the parents of the deceased Scott Spivey. Detective Jones records himself on his body cam. In the video, he looks tired. He had stayed up late. At 2:10 a.m., Jones had filed his initial report, which said that the shooting on Camp Swamp Road appeared to be justified. It's now around 2 in the afternoon, and Jones is reaching out to the Spivey family for the first time.
--:-- Deborah Spivey: Hello. Is this Ms. Deborah Spivey?
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Yes.
--:-- Debra Spivey: Debra calls for her daughter, Jennifer Foley.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: We were sitting in the back bedroom. We take all the chairs back there, and we're sitting around, and we're all, he's on speakerphone, and we're all sitting in the room. There's probably 10 of us back there.
--:-- Deborah Spivey: Since the early morning, family members have been trickling into the Spivey house. Aunts, uncles, cousins, waiting to hear more about what had happened to Scott.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Well, I still have a couple of, I guess, unanswered questions here and there. And actually, I was hoping maybe talking with you guys may clear some of that up for me.
--:-- Deborah Spivey: Okay, we hope we can.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: It started off immediately with Scott going through a life crisis. Just trying to understand. Scott, did he have any kind of medical issues or anything of that nature?
--:-- Deborah Spivey: No, not that I'm aware of, no.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Was Scott doing drugs? Was Scott this? Was Scott that?
--:-- Deborah Spivey: And I'm like, pump the brakes and tell us what happened first. Has Scott ever had any kind of issues with any drug abuse issues or anything of that nature?
--:-- Deborah Spivey: No, not really. As a teenager, pot and all. But, uh...
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Like, we got no clue what's happened. And when those questions started coming in, we were like, this is not normal questioning. This is... Scott's the criminal.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: We need to record this.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Jennifer's husband takes out his phone, and he starts recording.
--:-- Deborah Spivey: I will say this much. Scott, by his nature, will not start something. Now, he may not back down from it, but he is not one to start something.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Detective Jones tells the family that they have witnesses who saw Scott Spivey waving his gun on Highway 9.
--:-- Deborah Spivey: Scott pointed a gun at other people. Wrong. Other people pointing it directly at him or out the window at the man behind him?
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Yes, ma'am. He pointed that we have two other witnesses in two other different vehicles that say he pointed a gun at them.
--:-- Deborah Spivey: That just does not sound like him at all. I could see him if he was frightened pointing the gun out and down behind him. I just don't see it. I just do not.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: This is not how the Spavvies expected this call to go. They thought Detective Jones might say he was sorry for their loss. He didn't. They thought he was starting an investigation into who killed Scott. He wasn't.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: It wouldn't be until months later that the Spavis would figure out why.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: I'm Valerie Borlein, and this is Camp Swamp Road, a series from The Journal.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Coming up, episode two, a game of telephone.
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--:-- Valerie Borlein: Are you playing me off? That's what's happening, right? Okay. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch.
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--:-- Valerie Borlein: Scott Spivey was killed on his way home. If he'd kept going on Camp Swamp Road, he would have made it to his trailer. Spivey lived just across the state line in North Carolina.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: A few months ago, I made that same drive with my producer, Rachel Humphreys. We're coming up. We're getting ready to cross underneath Highway 9, actually, the main thoroughfare just north of the line. And hold on. Now I'm looking at the GPS. Highway 9 is going across.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: The shooting took place in South Carolina. Had it happened across the state line, things might have been different. North Carolina has a stand-your-ground law, but multiple lawyers and legislators there told me they would not have considered this a stand-your-ground case.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: And driving around, I realized how close Spivey was to that state line. About two miles. It's very hard to know when you've crossed it.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Scott Spivey's trailer sits next to his parents' house, where he and Jennifer grew up. As we pull in, I notice an old barn that's collapsed in on itself.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: The family has been farming in this area for over 100 years. The Spivey house is small, red brick, one story, set back from the road on a freshly mowed lawn.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: As we walk through the front door, Scott Spivey's mom, Deborah, and his sister, Jennifer, are there to greet us.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: It's been almost two years since Scott Spivey died, but there are traces of him everywhere.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: In the living room, there's a huge portrait of him over the mantel. The first thing I noticed is his piercing blue eyes.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: One Family Keepsake is a video that Scott Spivey made for his father, Byron Dale Spivey. It was recorded a couple months before he was killed.
--:-- Scott Spivey: Happy Father's Day. I love my dad because he knew how important it was to do the right thing, even when it wasn't doing the right thing. And at times we don't understand, but as we get older, we realize where we come from. And I appreciate my dad for all the things he did for me. Happy Father's Day.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Scott Spivey worked as an insurance adjuster. He would travel around the country in the wake of natural disasters to assess the damage done to people's houses.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: He moved home the year before he died, just before his 32nd birthday. He wanted to be close to his family, especially Jennifer.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: What was y'all's relationship like when you were little?
--:-- Deborah Spivey: Um, he did anything I asked him to do. Dressing up, playing dress up, playing anything.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: I mean, be like come have a tea party. I mean, he'd be like, okay.
--:-- Deborah Spivey: I mean, I could get him to do anything I wanted.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Jennifer and Scott Spivey were each other's first playmates. They were siblings, but they were also friends.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: They went to church and youth group together. And in high school, when Jennifer made homecoming court, she asked her brother to be her escort.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: Who else would I want to walk me out there on the football field than my little brother, you know? Who's my biggest cheerleader other than my little brother?
--:-- Valerie Borlein: So I'm going to let him, you know, be there for me, so.
--:-- Deborah Spivey: Scott Spivey's mom, Debra, has a calming air about her. She's a retired special education teacher.
--:-- Deborah Spivey: Debra was the last member of the family to see her son alive. Tell me about September 9th. How did the day start for you?
--:-- Deborah Spivey: It was a normal Saturday. I'm doing things around the house that you would do. I walked outside to get something out of the car, and he was leaving, and I waved at him, and he waved and smiled.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: On the night of the shooting, Deborah was driving back from dinner with her husband when she got the call from Jennifer.
--:-- Deborah Spivey: Have you heard from Scott? Do you know what's going on with Scott?
--:-- Valerie Borlein: and my heart just about skipped a beat and my throat began to feel like it was closing up.
--:-- Deborah Spivey: It was dark when Debra arrived at Camp Swamp Road. All the cops would tell her family was that Scott Spivey had been road raging and was dead.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: It's something that you can't believe that would happen because we've never experienced anything remotely close to that in a family or an extended family.
--:-- Deborah Spivey: So it's just difficult to even explain. It's like the bottom of your whole being, your soul, everything just kind of drops out.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Because here you are, you are a wife, a mom of two kids, and now you have one, and you don't know what to do with what used to be.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Horry County Police said that Scott Spivey had played a major role in his own death. He'd been drinking before he got behind the wheel. And for Jennifer, it was hard to hear that he'd allegedly pointed a gun at drivers on Highway 9.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: She and her brother both owned guns. But Jennifer didn't know how to reconcile what the police told her with how they'd been raised.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: So my dad's a veteran. We grew up respecting firearms. They were in our home. Is it something that we went and had Sunday shootout, like shoots in the backyard? No.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: They were used for hunting and that was the only purpose.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: After Vietnam, my dad said, honestly, other people took Scott hunting because my dad was like, My dad was the same after Vietnam. Daddy loved squirrel hunting when he was a boy, but not after he came back.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: It just, it took something out of him.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: Guns are used for one purpose, is to protect yourself at home, or it is to go hunting to provide food for your table.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Scott Spivey was killed just before 6 p.m. on a Saturday. By Sunday morning, photos of his last moments are being texted around in group chats among people in the community.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: Friends start forwarding the photos to the family. One shows Scott Spivey in his black truck, holding a gun out the window.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: The Spiveys meet to talk about the photos. Jennifer records it.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: Well, you see the pictures that we sent to you? And I'm sorry, who took that picture?
--:-- Jennifer Foley: That's the driver. That's the shooter. That's the shooter.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: The family is shocked to discover that the source of the photos is one of Scott Spivey's killers.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: Who posted those pictures?
--:-- Jennifer Foley: This is the shooter sharing it. The shooter sharing it with who?
--:-- Valerie Borlein: It's not on social media. These are things that he's sending his friends.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: People keep sending Jennifer photos. She's hearing rumors that an image is being shared of her brother's dead body.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: And Jennifer also hears that the person sharing the photos is Weldon Boyd, but his involvement in a brother's death wasn't confirmed until three days after the shooting on Facebook.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Boyd posted, quote, He then addressed the Spiveys directly, saying, quote, My thoughts and prayers are with you. I hope you find the strength and peace you need during this incredibly difficult time.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Boyd thanked the witnesses and his supporters. He ended the post by thanking Ori Police for their professionalism and empathy.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: All of this, Boyd thanking the police, the photos being texted around. They raised a question for Jennifer. Did the police ever take the shooter's phones as evidence?
--:-- Jennifer Foley: I do have one question for you. And I'm not trying to, please don't take this the wrong way.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: Four days after the shooting, Jennifer and her mom called Detective Jones to ask about Bradley Williams and Weldon Boyd's phones.
--:-- Detective Jones: Yeah, that's right. And they were texting people at midnight that night. And they took pictures and they have shared those pictures of the scene with individuals since then.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: Why were their phones not taken as evidence also? And why haven't they been taken? They have evidential pictures on them.
--:-- Detective Jones: The more answer to that, ma'am, is no being cooperative. As a matter of fact, there's a department set up for them to come in and bring us their phones so they can be down with.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: How long before that?
--:-- Detective Jones: Why was that done immediately before they had chances to destroy the phone itself?
--:-- Valerie Borlein: In stand-your-ground cases, the killer is considered the victim, making the dead person the offender.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: In these cases, the dead person's loved ones aren't granted the usual victim's rights, like briefings from investigators and access to police files.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Essentially, for the loved ones left behind, the investigation is a black box.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: The Spiveys don't know what's going on because they aren't entitled to know what's going on.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: But they did get some information from the autopsy on Scott Spivey's body. Spivey was shot twice. He was killed by a bullet to the back.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: After the autopsy, the family scheduled the funeral for Saturday, September 16th, a week after the shooting.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: The Spiveys had wanted an open casket, but the body was too damaged. Not just from the bullets and the autopsy, but from the way the police handled Spivey's remains.
--:-- Deborah Spivey: The right side of his body was so bruised, and that was the side that was the viewing side in the casket.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: We just, we had to have a closed casket. And Scott was such a handsome man.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: On the night of the shooting, the Horry County Police Department towed Scott Spivey's body in his own truck.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: From Camp Swamp Road to the police impound lot, 25 miles. It was like he was not treated as a human being, as something inanimate.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: Yes, it was a dead body, but it was the body of my son.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: You would expect more compassion, more reverence for a body than he received.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: To me, it almost bordered on desecration.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Horry County police said they towed Scott Spivey's body in his truck because heavy rain was in the forecast, which might have compromised evidence.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: It's been more than a week since the shooting. And what Jennifer is hearing is more rumors from other people than information from the police.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: Jennifer says that when she got a hold of the initial police report, it didn't contain much detail.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: Jennifer calls Detective Jones again.
--:-- Detective Jones: I guess it's put doubt in my mind. I'm not saying that y'all aren't doing a good job and you're doing all you can. I just, you have to understand it from my point of view, I hope.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: I'm not. I do. I get it. Like I said, I understand that, and that's the reason I've been aware of you guys, trying to give you what I had versus bad information.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: Because I'm sure you guys have gotten a lot of bad information, but that's part of my job.
--:-- Detective Jones: I get all that bad information, too, that I have to sort through and figure out what of it makes sense and what of it is just bad information and complete and utter hearsay.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: Yes, sir. I mean it. Like a game of telephone.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Eventually the Spiveys' game of telephone with Detective Jones does get somewhere.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Even though they're not entitled to much, Jones invites the family to come to the police station so that they can hear a key piece of evidence.
--:-- 911 Operator: 911, OKCV, MRC. Hey, I've got a guy pointing a gun at me driving. We're armed as well.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: This is the first time the Spiveys hear Weldon Boyd's 911 call.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: But instead of clarifying things, it makes them question the shooter's claims of self-defense.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: The Spiveys thought Stand Your Ground was an extension of the Castle Doctrine, a centuries-old legal principle that allows a person to use lethal force against an attacker in their own home.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: The way we understand Stand Your Ground is like if I'm at a stop sign, if I'm at a red light, if I'm somewhere that I have, I'm in my car, minding my business, and someone intrudes on my space.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: If you're in your home and an intruder comes in, you can take the force that you need to in order to keep your home safe.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: I get that. Listen, this dude shoots at me. We're going to put him down. I mean, this dude's insane.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: Are you following him or is he following you?
--:-- 911 Operator: He's been following us. Now we're behind him.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: But if I get into my car, which is an extension of my home, I can chase them down until they turn around and say, what the heck?
--:-- Jennifer Foley: He's stopping. He's stopping. Hey, we're about to have a fucking shootout, dude.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: This dude's got a gun. He's got a fucking gun.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: And then I can shoot and kill him and say, I'm in fear for my life as long as I don't get out of my vehicle.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: There's a flaw there. There's a huge flaw there.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: And then when you start putting these pieces together, They're like, something's just not, something's not right.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: Like, I'm trying to ask questions to get to the root. What started this? Where did it start?
--:-- Jennifer Foley: And you still can't tell me any of that.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: You know, so one time there was always three sides to the story. His, hers, and actually what happened.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: In this case, there's only two sides, because there's their side and then there is what happened, because Scott's not here to tell his side.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: And I'm sorry if you feel like we have been a little bit pushy, but I guess we've just been trying to advocate him because we don't know his side and we want his side to be told whatever it is, if it's good or bad.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: when I say that we were dismissed at every turn. That's what I'm talking about.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Jennifer wanted to know her brother's side of the story, but she wasn't going to get that from the police.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: So she began her own investigation.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: That's next.
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--:-- Valerie Borlein: In the mid-2000s, TV shows about true crime forensics were having a moment, and Jennifer Foley loved one in particular.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: CSI Miami was, everyone was watching it. You know, Horatio with the glasses, taking the glasses off at the beginning.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: I, I'm going to get to the truth.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: I was like, you know, that looks, that's just so interesting.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: So you watched it every week?
--:-- Jennifer Foley: Yeah.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Jennifer was inspired.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: In college, she studied biology and criminal justice.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: She got an internship at the North Carolina State Crime Lab.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: There, Jennifer got to actually work in forensics, examining carpet fibers, fingerprint analysis, the whole nine yards.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: What was satisfying to you about that type of work?
--:-- Jennifer Foley: Most of the time when you get those cases that come through, those are the voiceless. Like, the evidence is the only thing left to speak.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: And you have to make sense of that. And you have to put those physical pieces together to create a story that that person's not here to tell.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: In the weeks after the shooting, Jennifer began putting together the physical pieces of her brother's story.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: She scoured social media for leads. She documented evidence inside her brother's truck.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: And she began to make a timeline of everything that happened on the night of the shooting.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Witnesses said that the shooting on Camp Swamp Road had begun with the dispute nine miles south on Highway 9.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: So Jennifer made that drive herself, over and over, to try to make some sense of it.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: Somewhere in here is where this thing gets kicked off at, and they say that Scott comes the right side.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Earlier this year, I went along with her.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: And on the right is Bell & Bell. It's a car dealership. And there's a huge red bell.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: That bell is about two stories tall.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: Jennifer approached businesses that her brother had passed on his final drive.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: She asked for their security camera footage.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: So we have Scott on camera coming here at 548 on the dot.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Jennifer was able to pinpoint when Boyd's white truck and her brother's black truck first pulled on to Highway 9.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: To the left of us is where the tractor supply, where Boyd's truck is leaving from.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: Jennifer lined up the photos taken by Boyd and Williams with locations along the drive.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: So right here, we know there's a picture taken right here because there's a snag of trees right here on the right side.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Oh, yes, some like dead trees. Some dead trees.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: So somewhere in here, maybe, is where they're saying that Weldon gets run off the road, throw a brake check, Scott brake checks, and he goes off into the median.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: Jennifer matched the location of the photos with the time they were taken in order to figure out how fast both trucks were going.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: Right through here, when we're dropping pins of GPS pictures from picture one to picture two, they're going about 80 miles an hour right here.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Through here? Through here, 80, 85.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: And I'm going to 45. They're flying. They're flying.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: I've never really thought about just how long it takes to go nine miles down the highway.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: But on this drive, it hit me. This wasn't a sudden event. There was time to think.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: As we drive, Jennifer points out all the places that someone could pull off the road.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: Driveways, parking lots, intersections.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: To Jennifer, each one was an opportunity for Weldon Boyd to end the altercation.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: She logged every spot.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: According to her count, there were 96.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: By the time of the shooting, Jennifer had been a biology teacher for 12 years.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: She worked at the same high school that she and her brother went to.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: After Scott Spivey was killed, Jennifer took three months off work to focus on the case.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: The other teachers donated their sick days so that she wouldn't miss a paycheck.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: The day after Christmas break ended, I went into my principal's office like, I'm not, I can't do this.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: I've been here in body. My mind's not here.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: By the end of the year, she knew she needed to spend all her time on the investigation.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: I feel like I've been a very effective teacher for the last 12 years.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: But I don't feel like I'm an effective teacher right now because I'm distracted.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: And that if I don't go fight for him now, it will be no sense to fight for him later.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: While Jennifer was working as an amateur detective, there was someone else looking into her brother's case, the state attorney general's office.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: In the week after the shooting, the attorney general had been asked to review the Horry County police file and determine whether any charges should be brought against Boyd and Williams.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: The review process took months, and the Spavvies were hoping that the AG's office would bring criminal charges.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: In early April 2024, the Attorney General's office came to a decision, and the Spavvies got to hear it in person.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: I thank you for y'all coming up as quickly as you did, especially on a short notice.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: I wasn't sure how that would work out this morning.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: I know y'all have been waiting for what the AG's office was, what decision they were going to make.
--:-- Lieutenant: They felt that there was insufficient evidence to merit a criminal prosecution.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: Insufficient evidence to merit a criminal prosecution. That's all.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: The attorney general letter was just a few lines long. There would be no criminal charges in the killing of Scott Spivey.
--:-- Byron Dale Spivey: I haven't said a word. Go ahead, sir.
--:-- Byron Dale Spivey: No, absolutely.
--:-- Byron Dale Spivey: As far as I'm concerned, that young man murdered my son, and I mean flat-out murdered.
--:-- Byron Dale Spivey: When you go down a major highway on a weekend and you travel 9.75 miles chasing him, shooting at him, and the other young man she was talking about, he was shooting too.
--:-- Byron Dale Spivey: That's true. All I know is the other guy, he said before this he was going to take him out.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: The Spavis back their chairs away.
--:-- Byron Dale Spivey: The meeting is over.
--:-- Byron Dale Spivey: Well, I thank you for your time. Anyway, thank you all for the information.
--:-- Byron Dale Spivey: This is just me. I don't know what your feelings are about this or about anybody in this situation.
--:-- Byron Dale Spivey: But this stuff, you can go down the road and shoot somebody dead. That ain't right.
--:-- Byron Dale Spivey: It's still a daddy. It's still a...
--:-- Byron Dale Spivey: All right. Thank y'all. Appreciate it. Thank you for your time.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: We've always said that Scott played a part. We've never denied that.
--:-- Byron Dale Spivey: Obviously, whatever happened up the road, there was a handgun involved.
--:-- Byron Dale Spivey: Like, I don't know. I just don't.
--:-- Byron Dale Spivey: And had we gone, had he gone another mile, this would be a completely different story.
--:-- Byron Dale Spivey: North Carolina does not, there's a very fine line there. As far as what's considered justifiable and what's not.
--:-- Byron Dale Spivey: Excessive force versus redneck justice.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: At a later meeting, the Spiveys would get more information.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Deputy Attorney General Heather Weiss defended her office's decision, arguing that the case did meet the criteria for stand-to-ground defense.
--:-- Heather Weiss: She cited witness statements and Boyd's 911 call as proof that Spivey was threatening people on Highway 9.
--:-- Heather Weiss: She said that when Spivey got out of his truck, he became the aggressor.
--:-- Heather Weiss: Weldon Boyd and Bradley Williams stayed in their truck.
--:-- Heather Weiss: According to Weiss, once Spivey raised his gun at Borden Williams, quote, they had a right to fire because they were in fear for their lives.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: The Attorney General's decision was a huge blow, but the Spiveys had one final option, suing the shooters in civil court.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: That was the only, the only way we were left. To get any kind of justice for Scott was to have to file a civil suit.
--:-- Mark Tinsley: My involvement is I am a civil lawyer.
--:-- Mark Tinsley: At the end of the day, the only thing that I can do is try to get a jury to award money damages.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: Jennifer thought getting Mark to take her case was a long shot, but she gave his office a call.
--:-- Mark Tinsley: I said, you know, the problem that we have is this law in South Carolina. They're saying it's stand your ground, but how can that be stand your ground when you're behind somebody?
--:-- Mark Tinsley: And what did Mark say about that?
--:-- Jennifer Foley: Laura's like, you can't, that's not stand your ground. I was like, yeah, we're saying the same thing, but that ain't what the law's saying.
--:-- Mark Tinsley: I didn't see how this could be. I didn't see how you could stand your ground while you're chasing someone else's.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: No one has ever challenged a stand-your-ground case in South Carolina's civil court.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: That's according to the court office and a half dozen of the state's best-known attorneys.
--:-- Jennifer Foley: This would be a very tough case to win.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: But Jennifer walked Mark through everything she had discovered, and he was impressed.
--:-- Mark Tinsley: She is dogged in her pursuit of the what happened. She is a master of all the information and sorting through the information and finding it and going back and pulling it out.
--:-- Mark Tinsley: And so I'm very impressed with Jennifer.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Mark agreed to represent Jennifer.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: In June 2024, he filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Weldon Boyd and Bradley Williams.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: If he and Jennifer could prove this was not a stand-your-ground case, the Spiveys could be entitled to damages.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: Boyd and Williams have denied any wrongdoing.
--:-- Valerie Borlein: For months, Jennifer had been fighting with the Horry County Police Department for
