Clover police use rarely-filed mask charge in recent arrest. It wasn’t a safety mask.
A Clover man accused of stealing and biting an off-duty police officer also faces the rarely-filed charge of wearing a mask in public to conceal his identity, officials said.
Derrick Lamar Boyd, 26, was arrested Wednesday after Clover officers, who had been seeking him since late July, took him into custody, said Capt. Logan McGarity of the Clover Police Department.
Boyd is charged with third-degree assault and battery, receiving stolen goods, breaking and entering of a motor vehicle, larceny, and “wearing masks and the like.”
The mask charge carries a potential punishment of a year in prison, South Carolina law states.
Lt. Mitch Wilson of the Clover Police Department said the mask was not a covering used for safety amid the COVID-19 threat.
“The mask the suspect was wearing was not a safety mask to protect anyone from COVID or coronavirus, it was a ski mask,” Wilson said.
Wilson said the ski mask is the kind pulled over an entire head with holes for the eyes and mouth.
Wilson said in 15 years as a police officer, the case is the first where he’s charged a suspect with the identity concealment mask crime. The incident happened around 5 a.m. in a residential area, Wilson said.
According to Clover police incident reports and jail records, Boyd stole guns from two cars parked at homes in Clover. Outside a third house while wearing a mask, Boyd was confronted by an off-duty law enforcement officer from another jurisdiction who lives at the home, Wilson and McGarity said.
When the off-duty officer saw a person wearing a ski mask, the off-duty officer attempted to take the person into custody, according to Wilson and the incident report.
Boyd struck the off-duty officer and the two struggled into the road and into a neighbor’s yard, the report stated. Boyd then bit the officer on the arm, according to the report.
Boyd fled but left behind the ski mask and other items including a drivers license and cellphone, police said.
Boyd remains in the York County jail under a $9,587.50 bond, court records show.
