Nine Miles to Camp Swamp Road: The Killing of Scott Spivey and What It Means for All of Us
A deep-dive analysis for Horry County residents | March 2026
On September 9, 2023, Scott Spivey — a 33-year-old insurance adjuster from Tabor City, North Carolina — drove down Highway 9 in Horry County for the last time. What followed over the next nine miles ended with Spivey dead on Camp Swamp Road, a rural stretch in the Longs community just south of the North Carolina line.
Two men — Weldon Boyd, the well-known owner of Buoys on the Boulevard in North Myrtle Beach, and his passenger Kenneth “Bradley” Williams — fired the shots that killed him. More than two years later, neither man has faced criminal charges. That reality, and the messy legal, political, and procedural story surrounding it, is why this case matters to every person who lives and works along the Grand Strand.
The case has drawn national attention, and for good reason. It touches on road rage, the reach of South Carolina’s Stand Your Ground law, the conduct of local law enforcement, and the long shadow of political connections in a small coastal community.
On March 6, 2026, Circuit Court Judge Eugene Griffith Jr. denied immunity to both Boyd and Williams in the civil wrongful death lawsuit filed by Spivey’s family — a ruling that keeps the door open for accountability, even as serious criminal questions remain unanswered. [WPDE, 2026; WMBF, 2026]
Section 1: What Happened on Highway 9 — Two Very Different Stories
Section 1.1: The Role of Weldon Boyd in the Incident
The facts of the encounter are not as simple as either side would like them to be. What everyone agrees on is this: Boyd, pulling a trailer loaded with Tractor Supply purchases and heading toward his blueberry farm outside Loris, encountered Spivey on Highway 9 sometime that evening.
Both men had guns. By the time their trucks came to rest on Camp Swamp Road, Spivey was dead from a gunshot wound to his right side, near the armpit, with a second graze injury to his cheek. [FITSNews, 2026]
Boyd and Williams claim Spivey was the clear aggressor from the start — that he drove erratically, ran Boyd off the road into a median near a Food Lion, and repeatedly pointed a firearm at them while in motion.
They say they followed Spivey while on the phone with 911 in an attempt to keep authorities informed of a dangerously armed and apparently drunk driver. [WMBF, 2026] Surveillance footage from Boardwalk Billy’s restaurant showed Spivey consumed a substantial amount of alcohol in the hours before the incident. Forensic testing confirmed his blood alcohol level was nearly twice the legal limit at the time of his death. [FITSNews, 2026]
The Spivey family’s account, supported in part by an independent eyewitness, tells a different story. Frank McMurrough, a Virginia man driving to the Myrtle Beach area with his wife that evening, witnessed the final moments of the confrontation firsthand.
His deposition described Spivey exiting his truck with his firearm pointed downward at his side — not raised toward Boyd’s vehicle. McMurrough said the slide on Spivey’s gun was locked back, a detail that matters: it indicates the weapon had either already been fired or was empty and not capable of firing again. [Post and Courier, 2026]
McMurrough testified that the shooting began when he observed Spivey raise his arm, but he was clear that Spivey had not been pointing the weapon at Weldon Boyd or Williams in the moments before shots rang out.
So what does this mean? It means the facts themselves are genuinely contested — and that’s the whole problem. When the core narrative is disputed, and law enforcement agencies repeatedly chose to accept one version of events without rigorous scrutiny, a community loses confidence in the system that is supposed to protect it.
For North Myrtle Beach residents who know Weldon Boyd by name or by his restaurant, that discomfort should be even sharper.
Section 2: The Pursuit — Nine Miles of Questions
Even granting that Spivey behaved dangerously, the nine-mile pursuit that preceded his death raises uncomfortable questions that the court could not ignore. Boyd’s own attorney acknowledged during the hearing that there is no law against following someone. But Judge Griffith was direct in his skepticism:
Weldon Boyd and Williams knew the man they were chasing had a gun, they knew exactly how fast they were going, and yet they continued to follow him at high speed, turned off their intended route onto Camp Swamp Road to stay on Spivey’s tail, and never made any effort to disengage. [Yahoo News, 2026]
During cross-examination, Williams was asked why the two men did not stop following Spivey after they had already photographed his license plate — information that would have been sufficient to report his behavior to police. His answer was revealing. According to courtroom reporting, Williams responded simply: “Why should we have to stop?” [MyHorryNews, 2026]
The Spivey family’s attorney, Mark Tinsley, framed the issue bluntly: Weldon Boyd had told his mother on the phone that he was chasing Scott Spivey. An audio recording captured Weldon Boyd saying that if he saw Spivey’s gun again, he was going to deal with the situation himself — before law enforcement ever arrived. [Post and Courier, 2026]
The pursuit tells us something important about how Stand Your Ground can be both invoked and undermined by the same set of facts. South Carolina’s Protection of Persons and Property Act bars immunity when a defendant was the aggressor or was engaged in unlawful conduct. The judge found that Boyd’s decision to actively pursue a man he believed to be armed and dangerous at speeds well above the limit — rather than pull over and wait for police — undermined any credible claim that he was merely defending himself. Chasing danger is not the same as fleeing it.
Section 3: The Investigation — A Trail of Troubling Connections
If the shooting itself raises questions, the way it was handled afterward raises even more. In the immediate aftermath of the incident, Weldon Boyd called former Horry County Police Department Deputy Chief Brandon Strickland — not 911 dispatch, but a personal contact high up in the department.
Strickland did not come to the scene, later saying he did not want it to appear as favoritism. But in a recorded phone call the morning after the shooting, he told Weldon Boyd that he had sent Detective Alan Jones — described in the same call as a “good ole boy” — to lead the investigation, adding that Boyd was “taken care of.” [WMBF, 2026]
The Horry County Police Department’s handling of the case drew enough scrutiny that HCPD itself later asked the State Law Enforcement Division and the FBI to review the investigation. [MyHorryNews, 2024]
Detective Shellneil Tamasi testified during the Stand Your Ground hearing that she had never before seen a body transported from a crime scene inside a vehicle the way Spivey’s was. She also confirmed that a tablet found in Weldon Boyd’s truck — which Weldon Boyd later acknowledged contained a video unrelated to the case that he personally deleted — was never collected as evidence. [WPDE, 2026]
Two high-ranking HCPD officers lost their jobs in connection with the fallout from the case. The 15th Circuit Solicitor recused himself after Weldon Boyd posted a public “thank you” message on Facebook addressed to both the police and the Solicitor’s Office. The State Attorney General’s Office declined to prosecute in April 2024, citing insufficient evidence.
Then, in February 2026, a grand jury was impaneled by the Seventh Circuit Solicitor to review the case independently — a review that was still ongoing at the time of the Stand Your Ground hearing. [Yahoo News, 2026]
The “so what” here is not subtle. A pattern of personal relationships influencing a homicide investigation does not automatically mean Weldon Boyd or Williams are guilty of a crime. But it does mean that North Myrtle Beach residents — and Horry County residents broadly — have never been given a clean, untainted review of the evidence. That is a civic injury regardless of the outcome.
Section 4: The Stand Your Ground Ruling — What the Judge Decided and Why It Matters
The four-day Stand Your Ground hearing in February 2026 was as close to a public trial as this case has come. Judge Griffith heard from eyewitnesses, forensic experts, law enforcement, and both defendants.
His ruling was unambiguous about Boyd: the judge stated plainly that he questioned Boyd’s credibility in multiple areas, found his testimony inconsistent with that of other witnesses, and concluded that Weldon Boyd had not proven by a preponderance of the evidence that his use of deadly force was lawful under the state’s self-defense statute.
Weldon Boyd’s immunity was denied. The civil wrongful death lawsuit filed by Spivey’s family will proceed against him. [FITSNews, 2026]
Williams presented a more complicated picture, and the judge acknowledged it openly during the hearing. Williams was the passenger, not the driver. He testified that he told Weldon Boyd to slow down, urged him to back the truck up moments before the shooting, and said he was afraid. But Judge Griffith also noted that Williams never asked to be let out, never demanded the pursuit end, and was present and armed as the chase continued.
On March 6, 2026, the judge issued a written order denying Williams immunity as well, finding that Williams had “failed to prove by a preponderance of the evidence” that he was entitled to immunity on any ground. [WPDE, 2026]
It is critical to understand what this ruling does and does not mean. Denial of Stand Your Ground immunity is not a verdict of guilt. It does not determine that Weldon Boyd or Williams committed a crime.
It means that a judge reviewed the totality of the evidence and concluded that the defendants could not shut down the legal process at the threshold stage. The civil case moves forward. A separate grand jury review for potential criminal charges remains pending. The road ahead is long, but it is no longer blocked.
Section 5: What This Case Reveals About Our Community
Scott Spivey was not from North Myrtle Beach. He was from just across the state line, and he died on a back road most tourists never see. But this case is, at its core, a North Myrtle Beach story.
It involves a prominent local businessman with deep connections in the community, a local police department whose handling of a homicide was found wanting by its own chief, and a legal apparatus that took more than two years to reach even the preliminary stage of accountability.
There is a temptation, when someone is described as drunk, erratic, and brandishing a firearm, to write them off as the author of their own fate. That impulse deserves scrutiny.
A blood alcohol level above the legal limit does not forfeit one’s right to life. Driving recklessly does not automatically make lethal force a reasonable response. And whatever Scott Spivey did on Highway 9 that evening, he was not — according to the closest eyewitness — pointing a gun at anyone in the moments before he was killed. [Post and Courier, 2026]
The Spivey family’s attorney put it plainly outside the courthouse: the state had more than enough information from the start to recognize that this was not a clear-cut self-defense case, and chose not to look carefully. That is a statement about power, proximity, and whose version of events gets the benefit of the doubt in a small community where everyone knows everyone — and some people know the right people.
North Myrtle Beach is a community that prides itself on being welcoming and family-friendly. The case of Scott Spivey is a test of whether that reputation applies equally to everyone who passes through — or only to those with the right connections and the right zip code.
As of this writing, both Weldon Boyd and Kenneth Williams face a civil wrongful death lawsuit that will now proceed toward trial without the protection of Stand Your Ground immunity.
A grand jury convened by an outside solicitor continues to review whether criminal charges are appropriate. Two senior law enforcement officers have already lost their positions over their conduct in connection with the case.
And the Spivey family — Scott’s mother, his sister Jennifer Foley, and everyone who loved him — continues to wait for something that has so far eluded them: a straightforward answer to the question of whether the person responsible for their son’s and brother’s death will ever be held accountable in a court of law.
The ruling denying immunity to both men is not justice in itself. It is the removal of a barrier to justice. What comes next — in the civil courts, and potentially in criminal proceedings — will determine whether this community’s institutions ultimately rise to the moment.
For residents of North Myrtle Beach and the surrounding Grand Strand, that is worth paying close attention to. Scott Spivey drove through this community once. He never made it home.
Sources: WPDE (2026), WMBF News (2026), Post and Courier (2026), FITSNews (2026), Yahoo News/Sun News (2026), MyHorryNews (2024), WBTW News (2025).
Local News Via - MyrtleBeachSC.com
