South Carolina

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Police have arrested a suspect in connection with a shooting at a busy shopping mall in South Carolina’s capital on Saturday that left 14 people injured.

Columbia Police Chief W.H. “Skip” Holbrook said 22-year-old Jewayne M. Price, who was one of three people initially detained by law enforcement as a person of interest, remains in police custody and is expected to be charged with unlawful carrying of a pistol.

It is not immediately known if Price has an attorney who could speak on his behalf.

FLORENCE, S.C. (AP) — Under pressure recently to prove her loyalty to Donald Trump, Rep. Nancy Mace traveled to New York and filmed a social media video outside Trump Tower reminding her South Carolina constituents that she was one of the former president’s “earliest supporters.”

Facing similar scrutiny, Rep. Tom Rice has taken a different approach, quietly winding through rural stretches of his congressional district to remind voters of his work securing federal relief for frequent — often disastrous — flooding, and of his advocacy for agricultural improvements.

FLORENCE, S.C. (AP) — Under pressure recently to prove her loyalty to Donald Trump, Rep. Nancy Mace traveled to New York to film a social media video outside Trump Tower reminding her South Carolina constituents that she was one of the former president’s “earliest supporters.”

Facing similar scrutiny, Rep. Tom Rice has taken a different approach, quietly winding through rural stretches of his congressional district to remind voters of his work securing federal relief for frequent — often disastrous — flooding, and of his advocacy for agricultural improvements.

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — It took South Carolina lawmakers only two months to act when a female college student was kidnapped and killed by a man posing as an Uber driver. The Legislature acted swiftly to prevent such crimes in the future.

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — At President Joe Biden’s lowest moment in the 2020 campaign, South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn came to him with a suggestion: He should pledge to put the first Black woman on the Supreme Court.

After some cajoling, Biden made the promise at a Democratic debate, a move Clyburn credits with turning out the Black support that helped Biden score a resounding victory in the South Carolina primary and ultimately win the White House.

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Joe Biden’s run for the Democratic presidential nomination was all but declared dead as he headed to the South Carolina primary in late February 2020.

He had finished fifth in New Hampshire and fourth in Iowa. Still, Biden advised skeptics to withhold judgment until a state with a large pool of Black voters, the most reliable Democratic constituency, had a chance to weigh in.

“Too often your loyalty, your commitment, your support for this party has been taken for granted,” he said. “I give you my word as a Biden that I never, ever, ever will.”

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Governors took sweeping actions during earlier surges of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many closed schools and ordered businesses shut down. They issued mask mandates, vaccine requirements and even quarantines in some places for people who had traveled to out-of-state hot spots.

Not this time, even as the exponential spread of the super-contagious omicron variant shatters COVID-19 infection records. While governors are sending help to hospitals, they are displaying little appetite for widespread public orders or shutdowns.

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Sen. Lindsey Graham has become the first senator to disclose a breakthrough infection after being vaccinated against the coronavirus, saying Monday he is “very glad” he received the vaccine, without which his current symptoms would be “far worse.”

The news prompted several other lawmakers to get quick COVID-19 tests and report their status. A handful of Senate colleagues spent part of the weekend working and socializing with the South Carolina Republican, who attended a gathering on Sen. Joe Manchin’s houseboat the evening that he first developed symptoms.

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Tropical Storm Danny weakened to a tropical depression hours after it made landfall Monday evening on South Carolina’s coast but the system continued to dump heavy rains on the state and portions of Georgia.

At 11 p.m. Danny had top sustained winds of 35 mph (56 kph) and was about 50 miles (80 kilometers) west-northwest of Beaufort, South Carolina, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said. The system was moving to the west-northwest at 16 mph (26 kph). It added that continued weakening is forecast, and Danny is expected to dissipate on Tuesday.

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — If Richard Moore is executed, he will have some say in how he goes — the electric chair or the firing squad.

Moore is one of three prisoners on South Carolina’s death row who have run out of appeals in the past six months and could be among the first to face the grim choice under a new state law. But his supporters — including the state’s former prisons chief — say he deserves better.