Sports bar with big crowd near USC gets visit from sheriff’s deputies
A large crowd at a sports bar near Williams-Brice Stadium got the attention of the Richland County Sheriff’s Department.
Images circulating online showed a large crowd of University of South Carolina students gathering at the TLC Sports Bar and Grill on Thursday night.
Those reports induced a visit by sheriff’s deputies around 11:30 p.m. Thursday. Law enforcement was concerned the business was not operating under COVID-19 restrictions limiting capacity and requiring business patrons to wear masks.
By the time deputies arrived, however, the large crowd had dispersed, a sheriff’s department spokesperson said. The bar was not shut down early by the deputies.
TLC Sports Bar is located on South Stadium Road, about a block from the Gamecocks’ football stadium and the Carolina Walk Condominiums. The bar is in Richland County, just outside the city limits of Columbia.
A call to TLC on Friday morning was not immediately returned.
A tweet from the USC student TV station SGTV showed large, unmasked crowds of young people in the bar’s outdoor space around 9:30 p.m. Thursday. It said USC students told the station they were there “because it’s just outside of Columbia city limits, and doesn’t have strict COVID safety guidelines.”
Another student journalist later tweeted images of law enforcement vehicles with sirens blaring traveling toward the bar around 10 p.m., followed by lines of students walking down the street and getting into rideshares.
The sheriff’s department later clarified that those cars were responding to reports of a burglary in the area.
The scene Thursday follows weeks of rising cases of COVID-19 at the university, which officials have attributed in part to irresponsible behavior by students. Columbia authorities broke up several mass gatherings last weekend, including a crowded pool party at the Palmetto Compress apartments.
A doctor with USC’s medical school has warned that rising case numbers could exceed USC’s current quarantine capacity if the case count continue to grow.
This story was originally published September 4, 2020 at 10:15 AM.
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