Commercial Truck Insurance in Sumter, SC

Days after a body was found by hunters wrapped in a tarp in the woods, the man was publicly identified by the Sumter County Coroner’s Office.

Frederick Ricardo Nelson Jr., a 34-year-old Sumter resident, was identified Wednesday through forensic testing that was completed with the assistance of the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, and was also confirmed by his family, Coroner Robbie Baker said in a news release.

An autopsy performed Tuesday at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston determined Nelson had been shot multiple times, according to the release.

There was no word on a shooter, or shooters, or anyone else involved. Information about a motive for the shooting was not available.

No arrests have been reported by the Sumter County Sheriff’s Office, which is continuing to investigate Nelson’s death along with the coroner’s office and SLED.

At about 10 a.m. Sunday, a group of hunters made the grisly discovery about 30-40 feet off Cimmaron Road, Baker said.

The hunters said they noticed a strong smell emitting from the tarp, according to the release. There were six hunters in the group, and they immediately called 911, according to the sheriff’s office.

No other injuries were reported.

Baker said he estimated Nelson’s body had been in the woods between 1-2 weeks.

Anyone with information about the death is asked to call the coroner’s office at 803-436-2111, the sheriff’s office at 803-436-2000, CrimeStoppers at 888-CRIME-SC or submit an online tip.

In a breaking news situation, facts can be unclear and the situation may still be developing. The State is trying to get important information to the public as quickly and accurately as possible. This story will be updated as more information becomes available, and some information in this story may change as the facts become clearer. Refresh this page later for more updated information.

SUMTER, S.C. (WIS) - An $80,000 chicken heist was foiled in Sumter County and a truck driver was taken into custody.

According to the Sumter County Sheriff’s Office (SCSO), Christopher Thomas, 55, was supposed to deliver 41,000 pounds of chicken to two locations in Milton, Georgia, but had other plans to make cash.

”I don’t know how you get $80,000 worth of chicken out of the plant in the first place,” said an anonymous worker at Pilgrims Pride Plant.

Sumter County deputies along with the assistance from Lee County Sheriff’s Office arrested Thomas on Saturday evening.

According to the SCSO, Thomas — who is from Florence — was hired by Pilgrim’s Pride to deliver chicken and is suspected of having intentions of selling it.

WIS spoke to a worker at the plant who said this news comes as no surprise as these types of thefts keep happening.

”I’m not entirely sure how this is happening to be honest,” the worker said. “That’s a lot of chicken to be stolen out of there twice so I really have no idea how they’re even doing it and what they’re doing to stop it.”

Investigators believe Thomas sold part of the load of chicken he was transporting in various locations and was in the process of selling more when deputies pulled him over for a traffic stop.

When Thomas gave consent to deputies to search the truck, the investigator saw pallets loaded with cases of frozen chicken which was confirmed to be stolen from Pilgrim’s Pride.

Thomas was arrested with approximately seven pallets loaded with 215 cases of chicken that weighed 8,000 lbs.

It is believed Thomas sold about 33,000 lbs. of chicken.

Thomas is charged with breach of trust with fraudulent intent and is valued at $10,000 or more.

The worker gave insight into what the company could do to better manage the security of the plant.

“I guess the checkpoint to make sure on who’s coming in and out, what’s on the trucks and all of that,” the worker said. “I have no idea on how they get the trucks out there cause usually there’s these big trucks with freezers in them so I’m guessing they have one of those.”

If found guilty, Thomas can spend up to 10 years in prison.

Thomas appeared in court on Monday morning and was granted a $50,000 bond, but has yet to pay it.

In May, WIS News 10 reported on a similar incident in the same county where two men were arrested after being accused of stealing $40,000 worth of boneless chicken breast from Pilgrim’s Pride. However, investigators said the two crimes are not connected.

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SUMTER, S.C. (WIS) - On the night of Jan. 29, Sumter High School Senior Sophia Boone was reading something on her computer that brought a wave of emotions.

She was reading an acceptance letter from the school she had aimed for, the United States Military Academy at West Point.

“It was kind of surreal to actually open up my acceptance,” Boone said. “I cried, it was an emotional moment, and then I went down and told my parents.”

Born in Germany on August 31st, 2006, Sophia and her military family have seen the world. From New Jersey to Alaska, Boone and her two older siblings have lived in a variety of places because of their father’s work.

Boone’s dad, Alfred, has served 35 years in the United States Army, moving from Fort Belvoir in Virginia to Shaw Air Force Base in Summer 2023. Sophia’s mom Vanessa says this is a factor that fueled her desire to enroll in West Point.

“I do believe that my husband Alfred influenced her for sure,” said Sophia’s mother, Vanessa Boone, said. “But I think it’s all the experiences that she’s had, all the different schools she’s attended, all the great public schools she’s attended.”

Boone says the college application process has been a long one, but that applying for West Point was a whole different animal compared to other schools. Luckily, she says being part of the International Baccalaureate program has helped her transition while keeping her grades up.

Since Sumter High School offers classes within the IB program, she was able to pick back up where she left off in Virginia, developing the skills she needed to attend anywhere she wanted.

“The students admitted are expected to have excellent academics, strong leadership skills, and also good physical condition to keep up with the military training,” said Sumter High School Principal Anamaria Sandor, “Sophia has them all, (is) a well-rounded IB student, (and) makes us proud every day.”

Boone says the rigorous classes she took within the I-B program focus on developing writing and other interpersonal skills. She says her English and history teachers, Mr. Luther Barnett and Mr. Matthew Wilt have made this transition easier for her.

She feels they helped her take the skills and find a way to apply them in her everyday life.

“It’s not just about how it looks on paper, its’ also how you utilize it in the real world,” Boone said, “Although it has helped get into numerous colleges, it also helped me prepare for what I will actually going to endure being there.”

Boone says having these teachers in Sumter following her family’s move made the transition feel seamless.

They are all in her corner, as she heads toward what she was aiming for all along; A chance to learn at the most prestigious military school in the country.

“Being a part of the same program but in two different places was difficult at the beginning of moving here but my teachers here have been a really big help,” Boone said, “They’re great; both in their field but also as mentors for me.

Boone is the first student from Sumter High School to attend West Point. The school has a 12% acceptance rate.

Boone plans to become a veterinarian after her time at West Point.

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SUMTER, S.C. (WIS) - Nursing students view their pinning ceremony as a cherished tradition ― celebrating the culmination of nursing school.

However, students at Central Carolina Technical College are upset after school leaders decided to change the venue to what students describe as a classroom.

For years the pinning ceremony ― which acts like graduation for nursing students ― has been held in the Sumter Opera House. This year, due to scheduling and monetary conflicts, the students will be celebrating in the McLeod Health Auditorium what students have said is much like a classroom.

There are 32 nursing students in the program and Claire Noel told WIS News 10 all 28 of the students that were in class the day they brought a petition, signed it. This was all to change this year’s location and or date for the pinning ceremony.

She said this petition did not go over well with the dean of the program, and that students were appalled by the way things were handled.

The students told WIS News 10 they reached out to several other venues because they felt the college wasn’t doing everything in their power to find a new location that would create the ceremonial experience they have been hoping and waiting for.

“We took it upon ourselves to reach out to venues and we’ve asked about those venues and why we can use them and we haven’t really been given any straight answers so it’s frustrating and seems like we are just kind of put on the backburner and thrown in the classroom for this pinning,” Noel said.

A spokesperson for the college told WIS News 10 that they had exerted all venue in the area but due to scheduling conflicts and financial responsibilities nothing was better suited for the ceremony but the McLeod Health Auditorium. She said the college would still do everything in their power to ensure the ceremony is still respectable and to the liking of the students.

However, the students said when they approached the dean of the nursing school they were not met with such promise or understanding.

One student told WIS News they “were disrespected and dismissed” in a meeting that was called by the dean following the petition.

These students told WIS News 10 “she was upset and even told us people could sit on each others laps to fit in the auditorium.”

Jasmine Watts, a nursing student at Central Carolina Technical College, said the pinning ceremony has been something she’s looked forward to since she started college. Her mother graduated from the same program and had her pinning ceremony at the Sumter Opera House

She said its unfortunate she wont be able to celebrate her pinning the same way her mother did in 2013.

“I’ve come this far, this pinning ceremony means more to me because I am a single mom, I have two small kids and I’m doing this all for them. I’ve worked so hard to get here, I’ve missed milestones with my kids I’ve missed events, and this pinning ceremony is kind of like where I feel it comes full circle,” she said.

Watt said it’s not fair that this year is an exception to years past,

“We put in all this work and I just feel like we’re just not getting the celebration that I think we deserve,” she said.

Noel shared the same feeling when she said, “We have taken time away from our family, our friends, most of our classmates have taken time away from their children and this is the day to say wow it was all worth it and I just feel like we aren’t really getting that.”

WIS News 10 reached out to the Opera house and learned they were initially planning to do construction in early January of 2024 and informed the school of this last year.

They said they reached out to the school in January to let them know they decided to halt construction until after the summer, making the venue available. Later that month the Opera house said they received an email inquiring about May 1 and 2, and unfortunately, the Opera House had already been booked.

The spokesperson for the college told WIS News 10 due to scheduling conflicts and financial considerations like mentioned above, neither the location or the date can be moved.

WIS News 10 asked to speak with the dean of the college and the spokesperson for the college said she was not available.

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Public history student Stevie Malenowski spent his summer job surrounded by boxes of documents that had not seen the light of day in decades.

Years of furniture pamphlets, corporate memos and yellowing photos tell the story of Williams Furniture Company, a major employer in Sumter, South Carolina, from the 1920s through 2004. Malenowski’s task was to sort through the collection and scan some 1,200 items for digital preservation.

He was excited to learn from the specialists at University Libraries, who taught him standards for digitization and how to create a finding guide. He was less excited, though, to learn more about lumber.

“Honestly, the last thing I wanted to do was read more about wood products,” says Malenowski. “But the great thing about history is that the more you look into things, you see these characters start to emerge.”

Malenowski came to the project after taking a graduate class with history professor Jessica Elfenbein, who has been working to create a more complete historic record of forestry in South Carolina. In researching the industry in Sumter, known as part of the “wood basket of the world,” Elfenbein learned about the Williams Furniture Company archives at Sumter County Museum.

The museum loaned the archives to USC for digitization, and the collection is now available online through the South Carolina Digital Library.

“It’s amazing to think that all this history has been largely unknown until now,” Elfenbein says. “You’d never know that the ‘Williams’ in Williams-Brice Stadium is named for this furniture company in Sumter, or how the community there rallied to bring the factory to town. It was truly a community effort, and these are stories that are very important but little-known.”

Malenowski has also gone all-in on researching Williams and stayed on into the fall semester to complete the digitization project. He’s using the archives for his graduate thesis, which examines the impact of unionization on the culture of the Williams Furniture Company and the surrounding community.

“There’s so much to unpack in just this one area,” he says. “Having a union shop with an integrated workplace at this time was practically unheard of in the South, and it’s incredible how the union played a role in changing the social fabric of the town.”

Elfenbein hopes making the archives available will bring greater awareness of the far-reaching impact of this industry for the history of Sumter, South Carolina and beyond.

Last fall, Elfenbein taught an undergraduate honors course to feature the Williams collection. Lynn Robertson, longtime director of USC’s McKissick Museum, co-taught the course and led the class in creating a traveling exhibit that will debut later this year.

“All the students are from different academic backgrounds — business, science, the arts and, of course, a few history majors,” Robertson says. “What’s so great is that they all bring their own backgrounds, so they all look at it from different points of view.”

The course showed students just how relevant history can be as the students worked together to bring this untold history to the public for the first time.

In addition to creating exhibition displays, they worked in teams to conduct the first seven oral histories, which provide context for the archive materials and a different angle on the company’s story.

“Initially, I thought this class was completely unrelated to me, but I was wrong,” says Lauren Reasoner, an honors student in the College of Information and Communication. “Not only am I getting to professionally design the exhibit, but I also learned how to conduct oral histories, which turned out to be a crucial part of my senior thesis.”

Reasoner interviewed a Sumter resident whose grandfather sustained a devastating injury while working in Williams’ lumber yard, which shed new light on the company’s worker safety records. Other students talked with descendants of past owners and managers of Williams.

These interviews are now transcribed and housed in the Department of Oral History in University Libraries. Malenowski, along with another student, will continue the interviews this spring, thanks to grants from the College of Arts and Sciences Humanities Collaborative and USC’s Center for Integrative and Experiential Learning.

While the Williams collection is extensive, he says it offers an incomplete view of the company’s story without the perspectives of those who worked on the factory floor.

“The Williams collection is insightful, but it’s got such obvious blind spots. The workers are practically invisible, and you’d think the managers were the ones out there chopping down trees and building cabinets,” Malenowski says. “But we’ve finally gotten a list of people who want to share their stories.”

View the Williams collection online, or learn more about the Sumter County Museum. The exhibit will travel to locations throughout the state later this year. A comprehensive website, including content from the traveling exhibit, will launch in April.