Shots fired at TC police after state line store robbery

By DEUCE NIVEN

     Shots were fired towards a Tabor City Police Department officer responding to a late Sunday night armed robbery at the Time Saver convenience store at the state line just south of Tabor City, an Horry County Police Department report said.   

     Neither Officer Gary Lewis nor his patrol vehicle were hit when the “suspect fired two shots in his direction,” the HCPD report by Officer Jeffery Peavy said. Capt. Greg Sibbett identified the officer, whose name was redacted in the HCPD report provided to Tabor-Loris Tribune Monday morning.

     Two store employees, held at gunpoint during the robbery, were uninjured, the HCPD report said. It was not determined early Monday how much money was taken, but a small amount of it was recovered, apparently after heavy coins tore through the bottom of a Time Saver plastic bag used to carry the cash and change.

     Responding officers were told by a witness in the parking lot that Tabor City police were in pursuit of the robber on nearby Sandy Bluff Road, and that shots had been fired. After making sure the store employees were unhurt, Officer Peavy went to assist Tabor City officers, and were told by Officer Lewis that he had pulled up on Sandy Bluff Road and began to shine a spotlight on a cornfield when two shots were fired in his direction.

      Police set up a perimeter, but were not successful in catching the robber, HCPD spokeswoman Krystal Dotson said Monday.

     Police recovered the Time Saver bag, torn apparently by the weight of the cons, with some of the rolled coins, loose coins, and a single dollar bill, just past the railroad tracks at the cornfield beside Sandy Bluff Road, the report said.

     Anyone with information on the robbery or robber is asked to contact the Horry County Police Department.

     For more on this story see this week’s Tabor-Loris Tribune in print and online.