Richland County man illegally entered SC prison to retrieve drone, authorities say
A Richland County man was locked up after he illegally entered prison property, according to the South Carolina Department of Corrections.
Tyrone Lamont McCain was arrested Monday on a trespassing charge after the 32-year-old Hopkins resident entered the property at Lee Correctional Institution to retrieve a drone, spokeswoman Chrysti Shain said in a news release.
Days before the arrest, Department of Corrections Director Bryan Stirling tweeted about the drone.
“If you are missing a drone and some contraband at Lee CI please call” the Department of Corrections, Stirling posted on Twitter on Dec. 11, along with pictures of the drone and its cargo caught up in wires.
Three days later, at about 7 a.m., McCain trespassed on prison property, according to an arrest warrant. There was video surveillance of the incident, and McCain confessed in a written statement, according to the warrant.
McCain was released after a judge set a $500 personal recognizance bond, Lee County court records show. He’s scheduled to appear in court again on Jan. 11, 2021.
Information was not available on what contraband was attempted to be flown inside the prison, or who it was intended for.
No other arrests were reported by the Department of Corrections.
McCain is a former inmate who has been imprisoned in Department of Corrections institutions three different times, Shain said.
He was first locked up in prison in 2006 after he was sentenced to 10 years behind bars after convictions for failure to stop for a blue light resulting in death and possessing a stolen vehicle, according to the release.
A then-17-year-old McCain led law enforcement on a high-speed chase through Columbia that ended when the stolen Jeep hit a curb on North Main and flipped over before crashing about 75 feet away, WIS reported. The collision killed McCain’s passenger, 19-year-old Dante Lamarr Caw, and destroyed part of two homes and a utility pole, according to the NBC affiliate.
McCain’s sentence was suspended to four years in prison plus five years probation, according to the release.
But McCain was released three times on supervision through the South Carolina Department of Probation, Parole, and Pardon Services, Shain said. But he violated the terms of the supervision and kept being returned to the Department of Corrections to complete his sentence, which he ultimately did in 2017, according to the release.
Lee Correctional Institution is a men’s-only, high-security institution that houses 1,288 inmates, according to the Department of Corrections. Like other Level 3 prisons in South Carolina, Lee is “designed primarily to house violent offenders with longer sentences, and inmates who exhibit behavioral problems,” the Department of Corrections said.
In 2018, seven inmates were killed during fights at Lee Correctional that lasted more than seven hours. The prison is in Bishopville, about 50 miles east of Columbia.
On Dec. 3, indictments were issued for 29 inmates at Lee Correctional for their roles in that riot.
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