Melinda Anderson
BLYTHEWOOD – A Richland 2 School Board member has denied the contents of an Oct. 31 Richland County Sheriff’s Department incident report linking her in a case of intimidation with a local football coach.
According to the report, Richland 2 Board member Melinda Anderson dispatched 69-year-old Clero Evans, of Rockingham Road in Columbia, to the Westwood High School football field on Oct. 30 to watch practice. Westwood head coach Rodney Summers told deputies he felt threatened by Evans’s presence, the report states, and requested an official report for the record. Evans reportedly told deputies he had been sent by Anderson, and “after a verbal altercation” between Evans and Jason Nussbaum, the team’s trainer, Evans left the scene.
Nussbaum later told The Voice that the reported “altercation” was “more like a conversation” and that Evans left the field when asked to do so.
Late last week, Anderson denied dispatching Evans to the football practice.
“I did not send anyone,” Anderson wrote The Voice in an email. “My grandson has a father and mother who love and care for him dearly.”
Anderson did not respond to a follow-up email from The Voice asking her why she thought Evans would tell deputies she had sent him to watch the practice, or what, if any, was her relationship to Evans.
Anderson was also named in an Oct. 7 incident report after allegedly threatening Summers’s life during a meeting with then Acting Superintendent Debbie Hamm and the District’s Human Resources Officer, Roosevelt Garrick Jr. Hamm, who filed the report, told the Sheriff’s Department that during the meeting Anderson said, “I’m so angry I just want to kill the coach, and I have a gun.” Summers was not present at the meeting and no charges were filed in either case.
Anderson has also denied making the threats, telling The Voice that the incident was nothing more than “some foolishness cooked up by certain administrators.”
