Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott confirmed Thursday afternoon that two suspects are in custody following a string of armed robberies and kidnappings along Bluff and Shop roads.
The announcement comes only days after rumors of students being abducted from outside their homes began to circulate on social media. Police reports of two incidents surfaced this morning, but did not name any suspects.
Lott said Thursday that the suspects in custody, 17-year-old Raquan Green and a 15-year-old juvenile, were involved in a total of seven armed incidents over the past four weeks. The suspects began by robbing and assaulting food delivery drivers but eventually escalated to kidnappings.
Lott said Thursday that Green has a previous criminal record, but the incidents do not show a connection to gang activity.
Lott said an investigation is still ongoing and that the Richland County Sheriff's Department has obtained a significant amount of evidence from vehicles involved in the incidents and eyewitness accounts. Lott also complimented the victims, who he said helped the investigation "tremendously."
Neither Green nor the juvenile are cooperating with authorities, Lott said Thursday.
"This was a crime spree," Lott said. "They would not have stopped. The only thing that would have stopped them was them being arrested, and we were able to do that."
The first of seven incidents occurred July 3 with the armed robbery of a China Wing Basket delivery driver, according to RCSD. Three more drivers were similarly robbed between July 15 and 19. Two of those incidents took place in the vicinity of The Southern @ 1051 and The Village at Columbia, a pair of adjacent student housing complexes between Bluff and Shop roads.
The suspects were involved in two separate kidnappings at Stadium Suites early Tuesday morning, one at 1:30 a.m. and one at 2 a.m. While the first incident, involving a single female victim, did not involve a robbery, the second involved the carjacking and robbery of two victims.
The final incident occurred around 1:15 a.m. Wednesday morning, when 20-year-old Midlands Tech and former USC student Jordan Dinsmore was abducted outside her apartment at The Village at Columbia just off Shop Road. After being driven to an ATM and forced to withdraw $300, Dinsmore was able to escape from her own moving vehicle and alert a passing motorist who contacted authorities.
Lott said that the suspects had a racial motivation to their crimes, seeking out white victims and even apologizing to an African American woman they abducted. Asked if RCSD had a suspect for a third man involved in Dinsmore's attack who ran off, Lott commented only that the investigation is ongoing.
When asked why students in the apartment complexes that line Bluff Road were not warned of an area crime spree, Lott said that RCSD had not yet connected all of the incidents.
"I know that it's kind of been blown up that they're focusing on student housing," Lott said. "That wasn't it. They started doing something else."
The July 3 and July 17 incidents took place at residences on Aster Circle and Bentley Court, respectively.
Lott eventually surrendered the podium to Dinsmore, who told her story before a full room of reporters. While recounting the incident, Dinsmore became choked up when she cited her mother, a near-victim of sexual assault, as a reason why she refused to stop fighting for her life.
"I thought, you know, 'I'm gonna be strong like my mom and I'm gonna get myself out of this,'" Dinsmore said.
Despite having been threatened with a gun and jumping from her car as it was traveling (by her estimate) 35 mph, Dinsmore survived the incident with only "bruises and scratches."
"That's the best I could've asked for jumping out of a moving vehicle," Dinsmore said.
Dinsmore said she hopes her story will convince student housing complexes to use text alerts, as they do now for special events or water maintenance emergency, to warn residents of possible criminal presence.
"I know I can't ask for everything and I know that it's very hard to get those things put together, but I hope that in the future they start moving towards to that," Dinsmore said.