SC inmate called in bomb threat that interrupted Alex Murdaugh murder trial
The bomb threat that disrupted the double-murder trial of Alex Murdaugh two weeks ago was phoned into the courthouse by an inmate at a South Carolina prison.
The Colleton County Sheriff’s Office posted on Facebook that investigators traced the Feb. 8 call to a contraband cellphone used by an inmate at Ridgeland Correctional Institute, more than 30 miles down Interstate 95 from the Colleton County Courthouse, where the trial is taking place.
Inmate Joey Dean Coleman faces a felony charge of making a phone call threat, the sheriff’s office said. Prison records show Coleman, 32, has been serving a 30-year sentence for armed robbery and kidnapping since 2018.
The sheriff’s office said Coleman has no apparent connection to Murdaugh or the murder trial.
On Feb. 8, a prosecution witness had just taken the stand in Murdaugh’s trial for the murder of his wife and son when Judge Clifton Newman calmly instructed the jury to return to the jury room, and once the jurors had left told members of the public to evacuate the building — before noting that court would resume in two hours.
Sheriff’s deputies and the S.C. Law Enforcement Division searched the courthouse in Walterboro but didn’t locate any threatening device. Court resumed on schedule without Newman mentioning the evacuation.
An official source at the time told The State that a bomb threat had been called in saying a bomb had been placed in Newman’s chambers. The sheriff’s office confirmed that sequence of events in its Facebook post.
The trial of Murdaugh is continuing in Walterboro, and the once-prominent Lowcountry attorney faces a possible life sentence if convicted in his wife and son’s murders.
