The town of Walterboro, South Carolina – a.k.a. the “Front Porch of the Lowcountry” – is reeling from a sex scandal involving its local sheriff, R.A. Strickland.
According to our sources, the second-term Colleton County sheriff has been implicated in an affair involving a younger woman. Why do we care? Because the woman – the daughter of a local pastor – was reportedly employed by the sheriff during the time of their alleged relationship.
Moreover, our sources tell us inquiries into the alleged affair have uncovered a host of “ancillary issues” involving Strickland – a native of Colleton County who was the Palmetto State’s youngest elected sheriff when he took office six years ago.
“He has bigger problems coming down the pike,” a law enforcement source familiar with the situation told us.
This news site is digging on all of these issues, but multiple sources in and around Walterboro have confirmed to us that news of the affair broke in wide circulation among residents of the town late last month.
According to several sources who spoke with us on condition of anonymity, the pastor’s daughter was forced to confess to her affair with Strickland in front of the entire congregation at their church in Walterboro, a town of just under 5,300 located off of Interstate 95 approximately fifty miles west of Charleston, S.C.
Several congregants told us the woman also confessed to parishioners that she was pregnant with Strickland’s child.
Not surprisingly, news of the alleged tryst spread like wildfire through the community. Tips were even reportedly provided to the local paper of record – The Walterboro Press and Standard – although as of this writing it has yet to publish anything related to the scandal.
[su_dominion_video_scb]Strickland, 38, is married with two children. A Democrat, he was elected sheriff in 2012 and reelected in 2016.
According to a fawning feature in The (Charleston, S.C.) Post and Courier four years ago – ironically entitled “A Sheriff’s Passion” – Strickland became “enchanted with the idea of being a policeman” when he was ten years old.
“It was a romance,” reporter Andrew Knapp noted, a “love affair.”
“He loved the hats that state troopers wore,” Knapp wrote. “Their .357-caliber revolvers also caught his eye.”
Apparently other things have caught his eye in the intervening years …
Stay tuned. This news outlet is working on a detailed follow-up to this report and hope to provide our readers with additional information very soon.
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