During HHS basketball game, cops catch suspect on the court
Jeremiah Josey. PHOTO COURTESY OF DCDC
By Bobby Bryant, Editor
There are countless spins you could put on this story: “Caught on One Court, Suspect Now Headed for Another”? “No Free Throw for Suspect”? “Nothing But Net for Hartsville Police”? But we’ll go with Hartsville Police Lt. Mark Blair’s quip: “We combined football and basketball.” On Jan. 11, sometime during a home basketball game between Hartsville High School and Wilson High School of Florence, police officers chased a fleeing suspect onto the HHS court, tackled him and handcuffed him. Jeremiah Josey, 19, of Hartsville, was being held last week in the Darlington County jail. He is facing a charge of armed robbery, armed with a deadly weapon, from the Hartsville Police Department and a charge of probation violation from the Darlington County Sheriff’s Office. According to an incident report from the Hartsville Police Department, it all began when police received information that Josey, who was being sought by the state Department of Juvenile Justice on a warrant alleging parole violation, was at the Hartsville/Wilson game. The Hartsville High school-resource officer “had located the subject in the stands and was walking him to the lobby area” for questioning, an officer wrote in the incident report. The officer wrote: “I then went to the lobby to wait for them to bring him to me. Next thing I knew … I turned around and looked to the court and saw SRO Flowers and Det. Winburn on the court floor, with the suspect on the floor. “I then went to assist to get him cuffed, which they were in the process of doing. Once cuffed, he was escorted to my patrol car.” Blair explained what the reporting officer hadn’t seen: “He took off running. We tackled him on the court. We combined football and basketball.” Blair was not certain how late in the game the arrest happened, but said the game was still in progress. (Hartsville defeated Wilson.) The armed-robbery charge against Josey stems from a Jan. 8 incident in which a cab driver was robbed at gunpoint at 418 Marion Ave. in Hartsville.