Former SC corrections officer, inmate arrested for smuggling drug-laced books
Three people — a former correctional officer, a former inmate and the family member of that inmate — have been arrested on charges of running an operation to introduce drugs into over a dozen state prisons.
Shataysha Quneeka Lewis, 36, Devin Jamaal Kershaw, 41 and Coure Romaine Terry, 36, sent books containing drug-laced sheets of paper to at least 20 inmates in 14 prisons across South Carolina, the South Carolina Department of Corrections said in a release.
Lewis, a former correctional officer at Evans Correctional Institution in Bennettsville, left the agency in 2019. She and Kershaw were served with arrest warrants Aug. 20, according to the department. Lewis was arrested on four counts, including providing contraband to prisoners, criminal conspiracy and two counts of drug possession.
Kershaw, who’d previously spent 20 years as an inmate for charges including kidnapping, was charged with providing contraband, drug possession and possession of a firearm by a felon, the corrections department said. Kershaw had been released in 2022, the department said.
Terry, who the department identified as Kershaw’s brother, was charged with drug possession. He was arrested Aug. 27, according to arrest warrants shared by the department.
The department alleges that between March and June 2025, the three worked to send more than 600 sheets of paper soaked with synthetic marijuana, commonly known as K2, and over 200 suboxone strips to over a dozen prisons from the Woodruff Post Office.
“We fight daily schemes from criminals trying to bring contraband into our prisons, and I will not tolerate it,” Corrections Department Director Joel Anderson said in a statement. “These drugs are poisoning our inmates and are a danger to our staff.”
