SLED changes Blue Alert criteria following QCN investigation into McBee cop shooting, K9’s death

COLUMBIA, S.C. ( QUEEN CITY NEWS ) — McBee Police Officer Jarrell Wright followed a white Toyota truck a half of a mile, from the only stoplight in McBee, until it finally stopped on the McBee High School campus.

Wright clocked the driver, Alston Modlin, running around twice the speed limit in the 25 mph zone near the lone, main intersection in town. Investigators said Modlin had just walked out of a water heater manufacturing plant in McBee after finishing his shift on Sept. 20.

Modlin was a welder and worked the second shift at the McBee A.O. Smith plant.

Wright encountered the 27-year-old man a few minutes past 11 p.m. that night.

Modlin had plenty of places to pull over, but he wouldn’t stop for a half-mile as the pair headed southbound on Highway 151 through town. Modlin turned right onto South 11th Street and drove several yards off the side of the street onto the McBee High School campus.

Both automobiles stopped near the FFA classroom on the south end of the high school. Once stopped, the officer reached down for his radio and when he looked up, investigators said Modlin was aiming a high-powered rifle and launched the first of more than 60 rounds that ripped through the glass and sheet metal of the brand-new Dodge Charger patrol car.

The car had only 500 miles on it the chief said.

All Wright could do was slump down in his seat. McBee Police Chief Tim Knight said Wright pulled his armored vest over his head and waited for it to end, fully expecting to die.

But Wright pretended to be dead as he lay still, slumped over in the car.

A source shared a photograph of the shooting scene with Queen City News Chief Investigator Jody Barr last week. The picture shows yellow evidence markers circling the patrol car.

A law enforcement source told Barr the shooter was circling the McBee officer, with nearly every shot aimed at the driver’s seat. The crime scene photograph and the holes in the patrol car corroborated that information.

Law enforcement told Barr after Modlin emptied the rifle clip, he pulled out a handgun and fired several more rounds into the driver’s window. Police believe the dark tint on the patrol car windows kept the shooter from seeing the officer inside, who had slumped down inside the car pretending to be dead.

The S.C. Law Enforcement Division estimates the shooting happened at 11:13 p.m. Law enforcement sources said first responders and dispatchers initially didn’t know Wright was in trouble since the stop was not called into dispatch.

The public also wasn’t aware of the shooting or that the attempted cop killer was on the loose until nearly nine hours after the shooting. A “Blue Alert” was never published by SLED until nearly ten hours after the shooting – as state and local law enforcement were in the middle of a shootout with Modlin 25 minutes south of McBee.

Why SLED delayed this critical public notice is at the center of our ‘ Blew Alert ‘ report, a Queen City News investigation.

THE 9.5 HOUR DELAY

When news of the McBee shooting made its way into our newsroom, Officer Jarrell Wright was already sitting in a hospital room receiving medical treatment for four gunshot wounds. None of the wounds were life-threatening, according to investigators.

The photographs from inside the patrol car show how much of a miracle it was that Wright survived. One bullet hit his steering wheel, the driver’s side headrest was ripped to shreds, and his laptop and electrical equipment bolted to the console were destroyed – nearly every corner of the driver’s cockpit had a bullet hole in it.

Our first communication with SLED’s press office happened at 6:10 a.m. Public Information Director Renee Wunderlich provided the following information:

The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) is investigating an incident in Chesterfield County where a McBee police officer was shot. The officer is at the hospital receiving treatment. The SLED investigation was requested early Friday morning (9/20/2024) by the McBee Police Department. This is an active and ongoing investigation. Anyone with information about this incident should contact SLED by calling (866)472-8477 and/or emailing tips@sled.sc.gov

Renee Wunderlich, SLED Public Information Director

Wunderlich’s statement did not reveal the fact law enforcement knew who fired the shots, what he was driving, and that SLED was frantically searching for Modlin. In fact, at 2:57 a.m. – three and a half hours after the shooting – agents had already identified a potential suspect and had Modlin’s license plate information. But Modlin was still on the loose.

By the time of Wunderlich’s 6:10 a.m. email to QCN, SLED agents had positively identified the suspect, met with a Chesterfield County magistrate, and obtained an attempted murder warrant for Alston Modlin. Fourteen minutes after Wunderlich’s first emailed statement to QCN, agents had an attempted murder warrant in hand and were trying to find the fugitive.

The initial SLED statement did not include any information about the wanted man.

Law enforcement also never told the public a wanted man – who hours before – tried to shoot a McBee police officer to death, was on the run. That notice didn’t come until 9:02 a.m. in the form of a “ Blue Alert ,” a statewide emergency alert system designed to immediately notify the public and law enforcement of a “significant risk to the public and other law enforcement officers.”

The alert is the public notification system lawmakers wanted SLED to use in this exact scenario when the Blue Alert bill became law in 2012.

“The purpose of the program is to broadcast critical information to the public as quickly as possible in an effort to assist in the apprehension of an offender(s) who allegedly killed, seriously injured, or abducted a law enforcement officer and poses a significant risk to the public and other law enforcement officers. The Chief of SLED shall act as the program’s statewide coordinator,” the SLED website states.

We first pointed out SLED’s failure to issue the alert in our reporting on the day of the shooting. On Sept. 23, we asked SLED’s press office what caused the delay and wanted an explanation. SLED issued a response three days later, emailing a detailed timeline of events from the time of the shooting until the Blue Alert was canceled at 10:10 a.m. on Sept. 20.

“Could a Blue Alert have been considered earlier? Yes,” SLED’s Executive Affairs Director Ryan Alphin told QCN’s Jody Barr in an email on Sept. 26. “Should a Blue Alert have been considered earlier? Yes,” Alphin wrote.

The emergency alert system became state law in 2012 and the McBee shooting was the first time SLED has ever issued a Blue Alert in the 14 years the law existed. SLED acknowledged our questions over the delay in issuing the alert exposed problems with SLED’s alert issuance requirements.

“SLED criteria that were drafted in 2012 proved to be overly burdensome and was vague regarding NCIC entry. The criteria have been updated and will be posted to our website by the end of this week,” Alphin wrote to Barr.

The Blue Alert state statute details four criteria needed to allow SLED to issue a Blue Alert:

• (1) “a local, state, or federal law enforcement officer is killed, seriously injured, or abducted; and”
• (2) the law enforcement agency of jurisdiction:
• (a) determines that a suspect poses a serious risk or threat to the public and other law enforcement personnel;
• (b) possesses sufficient information that could assist in locating the suspect, including information regarding the suspect’s vehicle; and
• (c) recommends the issuance of a blue alert to SLED.

Lawmakers ordered SLED to create the process for issuing the alert, which SLED did in 2012 and posted those guidelines to its website. SLED’s site shows seven separate criteria the agency wanted before it would issue a Blue Alert:

The timeline SLED provided QCN shows agents identified the person and automobile investigators believed was involved within four hours of the shooting.

Here’s the full timeline SLED provided to QCN:

• 12:05 a.m. Chesterfield County Sheriff’s Office calls SLED Operations Desk (OD) to request SLED Fusion Center assistance from an analyst
• 12:41 a.m.  McBee Police call Captain Glenn Wood who then requests SLED Crime Scene Unit and Regional Agents assistance
• 2:57 a.m.  SLED Regional Agents identify a subject and a vehicle
• 3:34 a.m. SLED Regional Agents receive Fusion Center analyst packet of information regarding subject ID and vehicle license plate
• 3:37 a.m. SLED Regional Agents request assistance from SLED Fugitive/SSI Agents
• 3:56 a.m. Captain Glenn Wood consults with the Solicitors Office regarding an arrest warrant
• 4:24 a.m. SLED Regional Agents call a magistrate court judge and an agent goes to meet the magistrate at the magistrate’s office to obtain an arrest warrant for the subject
• 4:34 a.m.  SLED issues NLETS (National Law Enforcement Telecommunication System) Armed & Dangerous Advisory to law enforcement state-wide
• 5:15 a.m. The McBee police officer who was shot positively IDs the subject and vehicle to SLED
• 5:45 a.m. SLED obtains arrest warrant for attempted murder for the subject from the magistrate
• 6:24 a.m. SLED OD receives the arrest warrant for the subject
• 7:05 a.m. SC BLUE ALERT is first considered
• 8:05 a.m. South Carolina Information and Intelligence Center (SCIIC) Bulletin issued, which is a South Carolina Law Enforcement Advisory message
• 8:37 a.m. SC BLUE ALERT issued
• 9:44 a.m. SC BLUE ALERT updated; vehicle found, subject on foot
• 10:10 a.m. SC BLUE ALERT canceled

As the timeline shows, SLED’s first notification to other law enforcement of a wanted man happened at 4:34 a.m., notated by the entry of an “Armed and Dangerous Advisory” into a national communication system that only notifies law enforcement agencies. By 5:15 a.m., Officer Wright was able to “positively” identify Alston Modlin and his white Toyota truck.

“In the early morning hours, it was important to notify law enforcement, who in this case we thought most likely to encounter the subject, that the subject is extremely dangerous and has shot a police officer. This was a targeted attack against a law enforcement officer,” Alphin added.

It took McBee Police 90 minutes following the shooting to contact SLED Captain Glenn Wood, the head of the statewide law enforcement agency’s Pee Dee Region Office in Florence. Wood then scrambled SLED’s crime scene agents and an army of other agents to get to the scene and to begin work to file charges and to find Alston Modlin.

After getting the attempted murder warrant in hand and hours after agents knew Modlin was who they were looking for – including the truck he was driving – it took SLED until 7:05 a.m. to think about notifying the public about the wanted man by launching a Blue Alert. The alert would have informed the public and news outlets across the state of the wanted man.

The state statute shows SLED had the option to have Modlin’s name, license plate number, and truck description posted on the S.C. Department of Transportation’s electronic billboards across the state. The SLED timeline does not show agents asked the SCDOT to publish any information.

The SLED timeline indicates that at 8:37 a.m., nine and a half hours after the shooting, SLED issued the first public notice of the wanted man. The Blue Alert included Modlin’s driver’s license photograph and a picture of his truck, which appears to have been taken by a roadside government license plate surveillance camera.

However, news outlets didn’t receive the Blue Alert for another 25 minutes. At 9:02 a.m., Wunderlich’s email containing the alert and images were sent to an email list titled, ‘Media_Distribution_List,’ which included blind copies of undisclosed media outlets and was received at 9:02 a.m.

At almost the same time SLED notified the public via email of manhunt for the attempted cop killer, a man who SLED described in the alert notification as someone who “may be armed and dangerous. DO NOT APPROACH!,” law enforcement in Lee County, S.C. were headed toward a shootout with Modlin in the middle of Una Road, a two-lane country road and ended up in a shootout with the fugitive, 25 minutes south of McBee.

Social media posts from around the time of the shootout on Una Road show law enforcers were responding to the area just past 9 a.m. A source sent a message and placed a call to QCN’s Jody Barr at 9:13 a.m., saying law enforcement was involved in a “standoff” and “possible shootout” in the Una Road area near Lydia, a small community between Hartsville and Bishopville, S.C.

“The guy that was driving the vehicle, I’m going to say he tried to ambush him. Got out of the vehicle and started firing at the officers that were behind him,” Lee County Sheriff Danny Simon told QCN from the scene on Sept. 20.

Simon said his chief deputy, who was the department’s lone K9 officer, passed Modlin near Lee State Park. When the chief deputy turned around to pursue Modlin, the sheriff said the wanted man had pulled his truck sideways in the road and had a rifle pointed at the deputy when he rounded a curve on Una Road.

Multiple shots hit the deputy’s patrol SUV and the deputy was able to take cover. The rifle rounds somehow set the deputy’s car on fire, killing his K-9 dog, Mikka.

“The sad thing about it is, we got a K-9 in the car. The vehicle, the patrol vehicle was actually hit and engulfed in flames, and I lost a K-9 officer as a result of it,” Simon said. The dog was just under four years old, according to the sheriff.

In all, three law enforcement officers were injured by bullets that day. The McBee officer was released from the hospital Friday afternoon and the two other officers in Lee County were treated for what the sheriff described as “shrapnel” from the rounds fired at them by Modlin.

The Lee County deputy wasn’t alone on the scene. Simon told QCN that a state wildlife officer was also with the K-9 deputy and one or both fired shots toward Modlin who eventually ran from the shootout scene into a nearby cornfield. Investigators later found Modlin’s body lying on the ground with what they believed was a single, self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

Modlin’s body was taken to a pathologist for an autopsy. Lee County Coroner Larry Logan confirmed the manner of death was suicide and the cause was a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Because at least one shot was fired by a SLED agent, SLED Chief Mark Keel asked the Horry County Police Department to handle the investigation into the shooting in Lee County. SLED is handling the McBee investigation because SLED was not involved in the shooting.

The HCPD is leading the Lee County investigation and is sending ballistic, biological, and other evidence needed to be processed by a crime lab to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Because of SLED’s involvement in the case, the evidence and its processing are handled by outside agencies.

Both McBee and Lee County investigations are open and ongoing as of the date of this report.

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