Rock Hill police: Man called eatery 2 dozen times, said he’d ‘blow up,’ ‘gun down’

A man was arrested after calling a Rock Hill fast-food restaurant two-dozen times, threatening to shoot and blow up the restaurant and kill officers who responded, according to police.

Officers responded to Jack in the Box on Cross Point Drive around 8:30 p.m. Thursday after employees said someone repeatedly called the restaurant and disrupted business, according to a police report. The suspect “kept threatening to come shoot up the restaurant and then (blow) it up.”

Police say the calls stopped briefly after the arrived but quickly resumed. When an officer answered the next call, the suspect hung up, the report states. A second officer answered the next call, and the suspect asked the name of the first officer “because he needed the name of the person he was about to come gun down at the restaurant.”

The suspect uttered vulgar language and hung up, but called back six more times, threatening to kill everyone in the restaurant and the officers, police said. He told officers his name was Jeremy, and one officer got him to say his last name, Byers.

Officers ran Byers’ name and found an address on the 700 block of Green Street. They went to the home and found Byers there, with the phone still on him. The call log showed the number for Jack in the Box still in the phone because he called the restaurant again while officers went to his home.

Byers was charged with unlawful use of a telephone and placed in the Rock Hill city jail.