BLYTHEWOOD – As town council members were discussing the various investigations the Town is currently involved in during the Dec. 15, 2025, special-called meeting, Interim Town Manager Ed Driggers made an unexpected announcement.
“The issue involving the trespass notice [against Michelle Layman on Sept. 11, 2025,] was a matter between [her] and the Town. And I have notified the investigator that it is our intent that we will lift the trespass notice because there is no issue with her being on public property.”
Driggers’ announcement did not include a reason for the initial notice or a critique of the Richland County Sheriff’s deputy’s reporting.
The trespass notice was issued by an RCSD deputy in conjunction with the Sept. 11, 2025, Manor incident that occurred when Michelle Layman dropped off a check at the Manor, the Town of Blythewood’s event center in Doko Meadows Park. She left an hour or so later in an ambulance.
The incident unfolded in an hour-plus surveillance video that shows Michelle Layman arriving at the Manor, pushing a baby stroller and carrying an envelope in her hand. She later told The Voice that she was delivering a check to the Manor for her husband, Fred Layman, the Manor’s Director, who was on leave from his job at the time for cancer treatment.
Michelle Layman said Mayor Sloan Griffin and the Manor staff refused to take the check and told her she couldn’t leave without taking the check with her.
The video shows that as Michelle Layman was walking toward the front door of the Manor to leave, pushing the baby stroller, Manor staffer Walt Davis, stepped in front of her and grabbed the push-bars on the door with both hands, preventing Michelle Layman from pushing the door open. The video shows Griffin and the Town’s HR director, Jennifer Edwards, walking back and forth nearby while Davis held the door; they did not physically intervene according to the footage.
Michelle Layman can be seen in the video pushing the door so hard that it visibly moves slightly back and forth, as Davis continues to hold it closed. Griffin immediately walks outside through another door and stands in front of the door that Michelle Layman is trying to push open. Griffin never appears to touch the door.
A few minutes later, Michelle Layman can be seen maneuvering the baby stroller around Davis toward another door as Davis then rushes over to that door.
A lawsuit filed by Michelle Layman on Oct. 30, 2025, states that due to the stress of the situation, she had a medical emergency and begged to be allowed to go to her car for her medicine and get fresh air. The suit states that she was not allowed to do that. The video shows RCSD officers, a fireman, and EMS personnel arriving a while later.
The lawsuit states that an RCSD officer retrieved Michelle Layman’s medicine, and another deputy issued her a trespass notice before she was loaded into an ambulance and transported to a hospital where, the suit states, she was diagnosed with a heart attack.
The incident report, which was received days later by The Voice through a Freedom of Information request, dismissed Fred Layman’s claim that Michelle Layman was being held in the building against her will. Instead, the report focused on the trespass warning issued to Layman rather than the allegations of her being held against her will. The deputy noted at the bottom of the report: “This report is for the trespass notice that was issued.”
Whatever the several circumstances of the incident were, RCSD’s incident report did not comply with South Carolina reporting standards in several ways.
Aside from the report’s erroneous claim that the victim of the incident is Blythewood Chamber of Commerce, which had no involvement in the incident and is not located in the park, most of the claims in the report appear weighted against Michelle Layman. She told The Voice that she was never interviewed by deputies on scene, before the trespass notice was issued, that deputies only spoke with Mayor Sloan Griffin.
Mayor Griffin has not responded to phone calls or emails from The Voice requesting comment about the incident.
The following claims in the incident report against Michelle Layman are contradicted by the surveillance video.
REPORT: Deputies were dispatched to the Manor regarding a “civil disturbance.”
Title 16, Chapter 2 of the SC Code of Laws defines a civil disturbance as “a public disturbance involving acts of violence by three or more persons which causes an immediate danger of or results in damage or injury to another person or his property.”
The surveillance video, which is over an hour long, does not show Michelle Layman committing any acts of violence or causing property damage.
REPORT: Ms. Layman “entered the property without authorization.”
According to Driggers and council members, this is not true. They say the Manor is a public building that Michelle Layman entered during business hours on a day the Manor was open for business. According to Town officials, no authorization is required for a person to enter the Manor during business hours.
REPORT: “…husband called in stating that his wife was being held hostage by the mayor, which was found to be untrue.”
No sources were identified in the report, and the deputy did not explain what led him to the conclusion that Fred Layman’s accusation was untrue.
REPORT “…Deputies were informed by the officials of Blythewood that [they] wanted to put [Michelle Layman] on trespass from the property.”
The surveillance video gives no indication that Michelle Layman caused a civil disturbance, entered the property unauthorized, caused a disturbance on town property, or did anything else to justify a trespass notice in regard to the incident.
The trespass notice also fails to state the time period that Ms. Layman was to be trespassed from the property – a requirement of the notice.
In South Carolina an incident report must include details of all offenses investigated by officers. It must also include any follow-up investigations, reports of property recovered, changes in the status of any case, and other similar comments.
For the 12 days following the incident, Griffin, who was in charge of town hall at the time and was authorized to release the video of the Manor incident to the public, did not.
During a town council meeting on Sept. 22, town council members voted to force the release of the video, and for the town attorney to take incident reports from everyone involved in the incident. Those reports have not been made public.
While town officials released the video the next day to The Voice and anyone who requested a copy of it, Driggers told The Voice that the video would not be posted to the Town’s website, social media sites or on YouTube.
Councilman Rich McKenrick told The Voice that on Sept. 24, he was notified by Town officials that there would be no internal investigation of Mayor Sloan Griffin or Manor employees Walt Davis and Jennifer Edwards. He said the notification stated that the Town has no duty to report the matter to law enforcement for an investigation.
In answer to an email The Voice sent to RCSD on Oct. 6, asking if RCSD is investigating the Sept. 11, Manor incident, RCSD’s Director of Office of Professional Development, Maria Yturrie, responded on Wed., Oct. 8, with the following non-specific statement:
“RCSD is investigating all concerns from citizens and town officials to determine if any criminal violations have occurred. We will not comment further on any issues until our investigation is concluded.”
In a lengthy Facebook post on Dec. 4, Griffin stated that the Sheriff’s department had closed its investigation and that there is no basis for criminal charges.
At the Dec. 15 special called meeting, Driggers said, “There has been no report issued to the Town regarding that incident. I have no report that has been issued to us. But I have had communication with the investigators …I do not anticipate that there would be a report that would be provided to us. I’m glad to share that what was communicated to me is that there were not sufficient grounds for any type of charges to be filed on that matter.”
