UPDATED: Family deserves answers month after man’s death in Irmo police custody | Opinion
UPDATE: After publication of this column, the Irmo Police Department sent me an email with a few new details and a statement from Chief Bobby Dale but declined to release bodyworn and dashcam footage of the incident even though it could and should.
The statement about the arrest said in part, “While one officer monitored Mr. Jackson’s medical condition, the other searched the vehicle for identification. Though no ID was found, officers did locate drug paraphernalia. EMS was informed of the possibility of a narcotics-related medical emergency. While en route to Richland Memorial Hospital, Mr. Jackson experienced cardiac arrest. CPR and other lifesaving measures were performed by EMS personnel and the accompanying Irmo officer.”
The statement attributed to the chief said, “We understand the grief the Jackson family is experiencing and extend our sincere condolences — especially to his children. We typically do not share investigative details with the media during such sensitive times. However, in response to requests from the media and family’s legal representative, we are releasing this information in hopes it provides clarity and helps the family find answers.”
Upon receiving the statement, I reiterated my request to interview the chief about the situation and to see all the video footage involved in this case as soon as possible. I wrote, “I think the public deserves to see it, and think the police should produce it so everyone can assess this case. That’s the only fair, full and responsible way to ensure the transparency the chief says he values.”
The Irmo Police Department is still being scornfully secretive about the death of a man in its custody a month ago.
But the life of the man it identified posthumously only as “a 45-year-old male” is coming into focus as his family keeps pressing for answers about what happened.
Friends and family say Byron Jackson — Kappa Man, maintenance man, father of six — was a joy to be around, a guy whose laughter preceded him into a room and echoed long after he’d left. At 45, he’d still quickly line up on the street to race a young son or demand a rematch if he lost at the Madden NFL video game. He’d laugh in your face if he won, and at his own jokes before they were done.
His eldest son, Kiestin Jackson, 20, wrote the poem he read at his father’s funeral on July 3.
Ensnared by a union beyond blood
Yet alienated by undisclosed scars
I am still with you.
Your pain, my pain.
Your flaws, my flaws.
The burdens that you forever carry are forever my own.
Only through His grace, I still have breath to grow.
Everything you are, I am thankful for,
And everything that you weren’t, forgiven.
You radiated, echoed, and radiated again a father’s love.
From my first breath to your last,
And for that, I find joy that will never pass
What will be remembered about my father?
Well, it may be hard to say.
Could be his infectious laugh or how he so loved to play.
Perhaps he taught you what to do with freon,
Or how to maneuver a hot behind crawl space.
But what will be remembered most about my father
Is how he relentlessly fought the demons we all face.
Byron Jackson was pronounced dead at 5:24 p.m. on Wednesday, June 25, at Prisma Health Richland Hospital, three days after an undisclosed incident with the Irmo Police Department.
Jackson’s family still hasn’t been told exactly what happened to him just after 2 a.m. on Sunday, June 22, when a 911 call about a possible fight led to a pursuit of a utility van Jackson was alone in. He crashed it by a ravine and wound up at the bottom of it, Tasered and handcuffed.
It’s unclear how many police officers were involved. Two were placed on administrative leave, but police are declining to say more than that about them, even though they should name them.
The family says Jackson was detained and restrained, had breathing difficulties, and was brought to the hospital potentially brain dead after having gone 24 minutes without oxygen.
At a news conference on Tuesday, Columbia lawyer Bakari Sellers stood with Jackson’s mother, siblings, children and other family members, shared what little information they could, and said they wanted answers, honesty and video footage from a department whose chief talks a lot about transparency but has shown very little of it since things went horribly wrong a month ago.
Irmo police didn’t notify the public about Jackson’s death until 4:36 p.m. on Friday, June 27, two days after he died and five days after the incident that put him on a ventilator in the hospital. That means the department’s release went to media outlets 24 minutes before the Richland County Coroner’s Office closed for the week. The police were clearly trying to bury the news.
Even more troubling, the release included a comment attributed to Police Chief Bobby Dale that read, “Our commitment is to transparency, accountability, and ensuring the public’s trust in our department remains strong.” A month later, Dale is still declining to comment. An investigation by the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division into the officers’ actions is active and ongoing.
Within hours of getting the release, I had written and published a column that raised questions about both the incident and the department’s laughable “commitment” to transparency. I stayed late Friday night to make sure the public knew about this travesty, a compulsion I knew would underscore the department’s desire to do the opposite and say as little as possible that week.
Now I’m more outraged with each passing day at the Irmo Police Department’s refusal to release body and dash cam video from the incident or the names of the officers involved. The department does not need to wait for SLED to complete its investigation to share any of that.
The family and community deserve to know what happened to Jackson, as Sellers emphasized.
“He was listed as John Doe in the hospital, which absolutely makes no sense,” Sellers said. “We have a great deal of questions. We don’t know what happened that night. There are a lot of holes and a lot of stories. But we do know that the community deserves transparency and answers and honesty. We do know this family deserves transparency and honesty.”
They deserved all of that the week of Jackson’s death. They deserved all of it right away.
Instead, it wasn’t until late Sunday afternoon that Jackson’s mother was told he was in the hospital and that she and his sister could go see him, cautioned about what they would find.
Jackson, whose laughter had been so infectious, was on a ventilator, never to laugh again.
It was hard to imagine because he had been so many things to so many people.
He graduated from North Augusta High School and then South Carolina State University, where he joined the Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity. He operated Jackson Heating & Air Conditioning and attended Mount Transfiguration Baptist Church in North Augusta. He was “a beloved son, brother, father, uncle, nephew, grandson, cousin and friend,” as funeral-goers read on a screen.
“I saw him as one that loved life,” he mother, Bettie T. Jackson, said. “He loved his children. He loved some of the finer things in life. And his profession allowed him to get some of the finer things in life…. He was a dear person to me. He was my child. We all loved him dearly… And I’m surely, surely going to miss him. In fact, not ‘am going to miss him.’ I miss him already.”
His brother Damon said he loved his kids and his family and loved to have fun and tell jokes. “And my brother is going to be missed by all who knew him, and the family is just looking for answers, trying to understand what happened to my brother, their cousin, their father, right?”
Surrounded by the family members on Tuesday, Sellers was asked how police officials had responded to requests to release or review the video footage. He said, “I’m not sure they know exactly what they’re doing. I think it’s just been a calamity of errors, and I think the chief is trying to walk this line of protecting his officers while telling the community that he’s being transparent — and he’s cared about everything else but these individuals that are behind me today.”
Sellers said the family is waiting on a lot of information and not rushing to conclusions, but he didn’t rule out a potential lawsuit after more is known about what led to Jackson’s death.
“He’s been buried, but we don’t know cause of death,” Sellers said. “We’re confident in the pathologist that’s doing this. There’s a toxicology report that we’re waiting to hear back on. We are not, and let me be extremely clear, I’m not saying that officers caused his death. I’m also just saying, I don’t know if they did cause his death. You know, the funny part about these cases is usually officers get the benefit of the doubt, but these individuals do not. But we’re giving people right now time to answer questions. We just wish Irmo would.”
The Irmo police should not delay any longer. It should identify the officers. It should make public the video showing what happened that night. It should act like it really cares about ensuring “the public’s trust in our department remains strong,” as the chief said in Irmo’s release — a release that shows law enforcement officers everywhere how not to announce horrible news like this.
The public’s trust should and will erode more each day that the public can’t see all the footage.
It’s still too early to jump to any conclusions. As Sellers said, we don’t know what happened.
But we should know. The police know, and have for weeks. And the fact that the public hasn’t seen any footage from any of their cameras that night for nearly a month now is itself revealing.
This story was originally published July 17, 2025 at 5:00 AM.