Journalist tells police he was threatened at SC State House elections protest

A local journalist told police he was threatened during a Wednesday protest at the S.C. State House.

Sean Rayford, a freelance photojournalist based in Columbia, S.C., told a S.C. Department of Public Safety officer that a man had threatened to smash his camera while he was photographing the rally at around 12:30 p.m.

“They started asking if I was a (slur for an LGBTQ+ person) and asked if I had any antifa friends coming,” Rayford told The State.

The protest was in support of President Donald Trump’s assertion that he unfairly was denied an electoral victory. Election officials unanimously have said there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud, according to The Washington Post.

A reporter for The State heard Rayford make his report to the police, and then interviewed Rayford. Asked who made the threat, Rayford identified a man wearing black and yellow amid a cluster of four or five others who were wearing black and yellow.

Yellow and black is often worn by members of the Proud Boys, a group that describes itself as “western chauvinists” but is described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a right-wing hate group.

A group of roughly 15 people, standing separately from the crowd that approached 200 people, wore black and yellow; one wore a hat with Proud Boys on it, and others wore Pittsburgh Pirates apparel, which is also associated with the Proud Boys.

Rayford said he immediately reported it to a nearby police officer, who did not help. Rayford went to a second officer who talked to the person Rayford accused. After speaking to the man, the officer returned to Rayford and said he would keep an eye on both the men in the Proud Boys attire and Rayford.

“We’ve been watching them all day,” the officer told Rayford of the Proud boys.

Rayford told the officer the group that yelled at him and threatened to smash his camera has been “following me the whole time” he was at the protest. Other freelance photographers at the protest also told Rayford they had been following him, Rayford said.

Since Rayford arrived in Columbia in 1997, he has never experienced something like this, he told The State. Rayford often covers protests, and he covered the Black Lives Matter protest following the death of George Floyd earlier this year, according to photo captions from those events.

“The officer spoke with both parties and reported the incident to his supervisor,” Department of Public Safety spokeswoman Sherri Iacobelli said in an email. “Apparently, there was some verbal exchanges but there was no physical violence.”

Iacobelli said officers de-escalated the situation and that there were not other arrests or incidents involving protesters Wednesday.

This story was originally published January 6, 2021 at 2:24 PM.