Concerns rise as robbers raid Dollar General stores
By Bobby Bryant, Editor, editor@newsandpress.net
It was a brutal 36 hours for Dollar General employees in Darlington County.
On Aug. 18, two men swiped money from an open cash register at the Dollar General on McIver Road. No weapons were involved, and the case is considered a larceny, not a robbery.
On the same day, a Sunday, a female store employee was shot during an attempted armed robbery at the Dollar General on Main Street in Lamar.
The next day, a man entered the Dollar General at 904 Lamar Highway, showed a weapon, demanded cash and escaped with an undetermined amount of money.
That string of incidents in a day and a half has prompted the Darlington County Sheriff’s Office to reach out to Dollar General’s corporate office to try to establish a dialogue about what might be done to strengthen security at the company’s stores in the area.
“There is no evidence to suggest these incidents are related,” Lt. Robby Kilgo, a spokesman for Sheriff Tony Chavis, told the News & Press. “We have reached out to Dollar General to see if they will go over their security measures and provide suggestions.”
The stores have surveillance cameras. But Kilgo said, “Cameras are not a preventive measure, but a reactionary measure that (is) only useful after the crime has occurred. However, I don’t believe the stores have enough cameras.”
“There are other measures we will suggest, but for the safety of those (store) employees, I will not disclose what our suggestions will be,” Kilgo added.
“The sheriff is gravely concerned about the safety of all those who live, work and visit Darlington County, including those who shop and work at these stores,” Kilgo said. “We can’t be the only ones at the table. We can’t be the only solution. This has to be a multifaceted solution. We can’t realistically man each store 24/7.”
Dollar General’s website shows the Tennessee-based company has about 20 stores in the Darlington County area. Nationwide, it has 15,000 stores in 44 states and employs about 135,000 people.
In a statement to the News & Press, Dollar General corporate spokeswoman Crystal Ghassemi said: “The Dollar General family is deeply concerned over the events that occurred in our Darlington County stores. We wish our Lamar employee a full and quick recovery. Dollar General and its Employee Assistance Foundation are partnering to best support our employee during this time.”
She added: “At Dollar General, the safety of our employees and customers is a top priority, and we employ a number of safety and security procedures to prevent, deter and, if necessary, respond to criminal activity in our stores. To protect the integrity of these measures, we do not comment on them specifically.
“We are collaborating with local authorities investigating these matters. As to not hinder their investigations, we respectfully ask any additional media inquiries be directed to them.”
The most serious of the Dollar General incidents was the attempted armed robbery in Lamar in which a female employee was shot. The employee has not been identified, but local news media have reported that her wounds were not life-threatening.
WPDE-TV reported that the woman is 26 and that the bullet that struck her followed a strange path. The TV station quoted the victim’s mother as saying that the bullet hit her daughter’s thumb, bounced off her cellphone, grazed her stomach and came to rest in her thigh.
Also last week in nearby Kingstree in Williamsburg County, yet another Dollar General store was robbed, and in this incident, the assailant reportedly pistol-whipped the store manager and a clerk. Apparently no shots were fired.
“It’s surprising you would have a cluster of cases this close together,” said Robert Brame, a criminal-justice professor at the University of South Carolina. He said that suggests there could be a connection of some kind.
Brame said that, at least in theory, crimes of this kind stem from a motivated individual, a target and a perceived lack of “guardianship” for the target. One way to counter these dollar-store robberies, he said, might be to “harden the target” – to make it clear there’s more “guardianship” than before.
