HORRY COUNTY, S.C. (WBTW) — An Horry County man was arrested and given tickets for littering on Monday after police saw him throw plastic baggies allegedly containing hate messages out of a car window onto multiple driveways in a Murrells Inlet neighborhood.
People living in the neighborhood said the baggies contained hate messages. A spokesperson for Horry County police said the baggies contained paper and pellets, but could not elaborate on the actual content of the messages.
Jamin Christian Fite, 47, was booked into the J. Reuben Long Detention Center and released on Monday after paying a $200 fine, online jail records show.
According to a Horry County police report, officers were investigating a littering complaint in the Seville Drive area when they saw someone throwing the baggies containing paper and pellets out of the window of a 2012 Honda Civic.
Officers then pulled the car over at the intersection of Seville Drive and International Club Boulevard, the report said. That’s when an officer noticed a black duffel bag inside the car that contained “a large quantity of clear plastic baggies w/paper and pellets inside.”
Police later recovered 791 plastic baggies containing pellets and paper from two black duffel bags, the report said. During the investigation, police also found “that there were numerous baggies spread over miles of the neighborhood.”
It’s not the first time flyers containing anti-Semitic or other hate messages have been circulated in Horry County. Carolina Forest residents found them in their yards in July 2022. Before that, the flyers were distributed in the Surfside Beach and Conway areas.
One resident in a Murrells Inlet neighborhood, Rob Griffin, is very unhappy about the situation.
“You know, it’s our lawn, not theirs,” Griffin said. “Ours is not a public dump. It’s not a dog park, so, people that think they have the nerve to basically just dump stuff, whatever their beliefs are and whatever they feel onto somebody else. That’s pretty much forcing their views and opinions on other people.”
Another resident, Kim Stull, echoed Griffin’s feelings.
“This is our second bag that we’ve received and the first one did have rice in it and I do remember reading it and it was some kind of antisemitic verbiage in there,” Stull said. “I didn’t open this one until just now. This showed up Sunday morning in our driveway.”
Similar flyers have been distributed across the U.S., including in April in Connecticut.
News13 spoke with 15th Circuit Solicitor Jimmy Richardson, who said that as offensive as the situation is, the only crime committed is the way Fite distributed the flyers.
