Granite Countertops in Sumpter, SC

COLUMBIA, S.C. (WIS) - The Sumter County Sheriff’s Office has announced the capture of an inmate who escaped between Saturday evening and early Sunday morning.

Staff at the Sumter County Sheriff’s Office Detention Center found Lance Michael Alberti had escaped from the jail after an early morning inmate check on Sunday.

Deputies from the Sumter County Sheriff’s Office and the Orangeburg County Sheriff’s Office found Alberti at a truck stop near the Santee area. Law enforcement attempted to take him into custody, but he stole a vehicle and drove away, leading officers on a short car chase.

The chase ended when Alberti wrecked along a road near I-95. He then ran into a wooded area.

K9s and helicopters searched the area into the night.

Early Monday morning, several agencies were able to take Alberti into custody after he was located trying to hide in a home in Vance.

Alberti had originally been brought to the detention center after being arrested on October 7 on a shoplifting offense in Sumter. Investigators said he originally was held under a false name, his true identity was discovered during booking.

Staff confirmed he has an outstanding warrant on probation and applied a hold. He also was charged with providing a false identity and his bond was denied Saturday pending extradition.

Deputies say Alberti damaged part of the building and was able to squeeze himself through part of an air duct passage. The area has since been repaired and reinforced.

“I am grateful for the mass response from our neighboring agencies and their efforts to help put this individual back where he belongs,” said Sumter County Sheriff Anthony Dennis. “This person was determined to take extreme measures to avoid law enforcement and potential consequences. He will now face multiple additional charges for his actions.”

Alberti is now charged with escape, which carries a term of up to 15 years. He is also facing charges of grand larceny, identity fraud, shoplifting. Additionally, he is facing multiple charges from Orangeburg related to his capture according to the Sumter County Sheriff’s Office.

The Orangeburg County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Richard Walker said warrants are being sought for Alberti currently. The public index does not yet reflect any charges.

Department spokesperson Maj. Randall Stewart told WIS Alberti has been placed into a higher security portion of the jail.

Stewart said Alberti was in an open pod when he damaged the jail, which is where he was supposed to be at the time.

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After Samuel Martin's wife passed away, he wasn't sure how he'd be able to keep up with the farm work on his 149 acres. Then, his granddaughter Zakaya stepped in.

SUMTER, S.C. — A Sumter grandfather and his granddaughter are getting attention on social media for their work on a farm.

Samuel Martin owns the 149 acres that make up Martin Farms, about 20 minutes from downtown Sumter. He’s maintained the land for years, but after his wife passed away, Martin said he wasn’t sure how he could keep up the work on his own.

"I needed some help and I just was wondering who would come around and extend the invitation," Martin explains. "I said, 'Well now if I can find somebody to help me,' and the Lord sent her by."

His 23-year-old granddaughter Zakaya Butler stepped in. She started the job a couple weeks ago, running errands and helping with marketing.

"I feel proud of myself to have somebody that say ‘Well, Granddaddy, I wanna help you," Martin shares. "That makes me feel real good about it."

"I was like, “Granddad, maybe we need to you know market a little more different’ because he doesn't have social media," Butler explains.

Her first day on the job, Butler posted a video on Facebook and on TikTok.

"It took off," Butler smiles. "It took off and I wasn’t expecting that, but it definitely did."

Now with over 500,000 views, Butler and Martin have been getting lots of calls asking about their meat and their fresh produce.

"I was like ‘Granddad, we gotta get to work! We gotta get to work!" Butler shares. "People are calling, asking for this, asking for that."

Martin tells me he’s sold out of almost all his product.

"Friday and Saturday were like — whoo — like an open house!" Martin exclaims. "Busy as a bee!"

"We got people from Charleston, Walterboro," Butler lists. "We done seen half of the cities in South Carolina come up."

Now he and his granddaughter are working hard at the farm to meet up with the new demand, getting closer with each other in the process.

"It means a lot because he’s smiling more, he’s happy," Butler beams. "That makes me happy and I smile a lot already."

As for why the video has gone viral, Martin has two theories.

"A lot of the people love the fact that it’s bring back memories," Martin shares about the comments on the video talking about users growing up on farms themselves.

For others, Martin says seeing a hog on video might have piqued peoples' interest.

"I guess some people have just never seen a farm," Martin laughs.

Martin tells me the next step is to get a sign so people coming out to the farm know they’re in the right place.

The duo is working six days a week together, 8 a.m. to 7 p.m.

The hydraulic manufacturing plant on the corner of North Wise Drive and Jefferson Road will be closing in early 2024, a Caterpillar representative says.

SUMTER, S.C. — A Sumter manufacturing plant is closing. One of the two Caterpillar plants, which makes hydraulics, is shutting its doors.

The American construction equipment manufacturer has two plants in Sumter. News 19 has learned the Hydraulic Cylinder Group location, on the corner of North Wise Drive and Jefferson Road, is closing.

"When you’re young and you wanna stay somewhere for a while, it’s kinda a bummer," Charlie Franklin explains.

Franklin is an employee at the plant — one of the approximately 150 people who will be impacted by the closure. He says after working there for three years, the news came as a shock.

"They actually came to us one-on-one and let us know what was going on. I mean it’s kinda hard to break news like that to somebody so they kinda just got us all in a room and let us know," Franklin says. "But they’re being very professional about it but it’s just kinda the situation that you don’t know how to go about it."

A representative for Caterpillar says the current employees will be moved to other facilities or offered severance packages.

"In order to better position ourselves for future competitiveness, we plan to consolidate operations at our Sumter hydraulics facility into other existing facilities early next year," Senior Communications Representatives Brant Watson tells us. "We are also offering severance packages."

Residents who live near the plant like Carol Turner say they’ve seen the company’s impact on the community.

"We had this house built, so we’ve been the only owners," Turner shares about what the area was like when she moved here in 1972. "When we first came in, we had no idea that we were going to have a heavy industrial plant right across the street."

It was a decision that Turner fought because she liked the peace and quiet.

"It was very nice," Turner remembers. "There was no traffic and really people when we were inviting people to come over, they didn’t know where Jefferson Road was."

But when Caterpillar came in, that all changed.

"The traffic — it’s heavy and it’s fast," Turner explains.

Turner tells me now that it’s closing, it might get a little quieter. On the other hand, her neighbor John Myers says he hopes a new business takes its place.

"I'm kinda sad that they’re doing it," Myers says. "And I’m hoping if they do close that they bring another company to bring some more jobs in this area, you know?"

The company says it will close this plant in 2024 by the end of the first quarter. The precision pins facility will not be impacted, according to a Caterpillar representative.

SUMTER, S.C. — Sweet and confident are two words that best describe Crestwood High School junior Saravia Wright.

The 17-year-old is a first-year student in the health science career cluster program at Sumter Career and Technology Center and talked this week about how she recently put into practice her new-found skills to potentially help save a Sumter School District teacher’s life.

Wright and Lakewood High School teacher Gayle Jennings were all smiles recently in reflecting on the events of Oct. 17, when the young nursing student jumped into duty on the spot when Jennings experienced a very high blood pressure episode at the career center.

While accompanying a group of Lakewood students on a field study tour of career and technical programs offered at the center, Jennings began to feel weak with a severe headache and could not look into the light. She told a staff member nearby of her symptoms.

Wright was also nearby, and when she heard the conversation, she immediately recalled that her cousin suffers from the same symptoms because of high blood pressure.

In an instant, the student was quickly bringing a blood pressure machine from her classroom to the scene to get an accurate reading.

The teenager calmed Jennings down through conversation and performed an accurate reading. Jennings’ blood pressure was at an emergency, crisis level, and the student then immediately got her health science instructor at the center, Kim Browning, to come to the scene.

Browning assessed the situation and agreed with her student that Jennings needed immediate medical attention, and school officials called an ambulance.

Jennings would wind up spending most of the day at Prisma Health Tuomey Hospital until her blood pressure was lower.

Wright said this week the event was actually her first time using a blood pressure machine since her coursework just began in August, but she also remembered reading from her textbook about symptoms.

“To be honest, I just went off what I kind of knew to check her blood pressure,” Wright said. “I was really nervous because I never used the machine before.”

Jennings said she is “very grateful” to the youngster and brushed off any concerns about it being Wright’s first time using the equipment.

“But it didn’t show,” Jennings said. “She just jumped in and did what she had to do and didn’t hesitate at all. She really acted like an old pro at it.”

This was Jennings’ second visit since last month to praise and support Wright for her heroism. Two weeks ago, she came to the career center with a card and candy for the teen.

“I came here then and presented her with a basket of sweets,” Jennings said, “because she was so sweet I said, ‘Let me throw in some candy.’ And I also had a thank you card in it. But, no matter what I had in that basket, it wasn’t enough because I was so grateful she was in the right place at the right time.”

Jennings came to the visit with a bouquet of flowers and balloons recognizing Wright as special and that it was her day in the limelight.

The 17-year-old said it was “a great feeling” to get all the attention, which she honestly did not expect.

But, Wright admitted, she loves attention, talking and bringing “light to the room.”

“When I was in middle school, if there was anything that we had to do with talking in front of the room, they always put me up there,” Wright said. “I am a social butterfly.”

Her career goal is to be a registered nurse, and she thinks her personality will be an asset in the work.

“When people are sick, they don’t want boring nurses who just come in, give them their medicine and go out,” she said. “They need somebody who is going to talk to them and motivate them to get up. If they want to go dancing in Hollywood, that will be where we are going.”

Jonathan W. Sumter will now have to pay the money back as restitution in addition to serving more than 7 years in prison.

Photo: Thinkstock

COLUMBIA, S.C. — Prosecutors say a South Carolina man claimed to be providing behavioral health services to disabled, low-income people. But details released during his recent trial suggest he actually used the stolen identities of nearly 200 people with disabilities to game the system of over $1 million in Medicaid funds.

The U.S. Attorney's Office District of South Carolina announced on Friday that 51-year-old Jonathan W. Sumter of Greer was sentenced to 7 years in prison for a scheme that netted a big payout at the expense of numerous victims.

According to prosecutors, Sumter operated a company known as PHC Supportive Services that claimed to offer rehabilitative behavioral health services through the Medicaid program.

But investigators soon learned that the company had no clients despite billing South Carolina Medicaid over $1 million for services it never provided.

Instead, prosecutors said Sumter and his PHC company used stolen National Provider Identifier numbers of nine healthcare professionals in order to invoice the Medicaid program. He then used the stolen identities of 196 Medicaid members "with severe mental and emotional health disorders" without them even knowing.

Caregivers and clients were later contacted by investigators and confirmed they had not received services from PHC or its founder. Service providers confirmed the same when asked if they had used Sumter's services.

In Friday's announcement, U.S. Attorney Adair Boroughs took a strong stance against Sumter's actions.

“Using stolen identities of the most defenseless people to steal money from the hard-working people of South Carolina is unacceptable.," Boroughs said.

Boroughs added that the U.S. Attorney's Office would continue to "aggressively prosecute" offenders who steal from programs designed to provide care to vulnerable citizens.

Sumter now faces 92 months in prison and will be required to repay $1,055,373.66 in restitution to South Carolina Medicaid.

“This sentence warns bad actors in the behavioral healthcare field that South Carolina has citizens in need of these services," Attorney General Alan Wilson said. "Any fraudulent conduct that abuses these programs or prevents our citizens from receiving needed services will not be tolerated."