Football player jailed for 2 months was wrongly accused of murder, SC suit says
Ty’Ran Dixon was supposed to fly home to South Carolina in September, following his first season playing professional football in Finland.
Instead, he was detained upon arriving in the U.S. and imprisoned for more than two months because a South Carolina sheriff’s office launched a “nationwide manhunt for the wrong man,” according to a lawsuit filed recently.
On Sept. 30, Dixon flew from Finland to Boston Logan International Airport in Massachusetts, where authorities stopped him from traveling to his hometown in Columbia, according to complaint filed April 2.
Dixon was handcuffed and put in a holding cell without knowing why — until the next day, a complaint says.
After a night in the cell, he learned he was wanted for the murder of Jasmine Roach, who was killed on Oct. 15, 2023 in Barnwell County, South Carolina, a complaint says.
But Dixon, a native of Columbia, where he attended high school before a successful college football career, “had never been to Barnwell County” and was innocent, the filing says.
At the time Roach was killed, Dixon was pursuing his professional football career and was in Newberry County, at Newberry College’s homecoming, according to the complaint. He had been a defensive lineman for the team.
His detainment in Boston was the start of 67 days of “special unendurable hell” in five different out-of-state jails, according to the complaint. During that time, he spent three weeks in solitary confinement, the filing says.
Though Dixon and his family repeatedly maintained his innocence, he wouldn’t be released until he was transferred to Columbia, where the Barnwell County Sheriff’s Office told him there had been “a mistake,” according to the complaint.
Weeks later, a man with a similar, but differently spelled name, who “looks nothing like Dixon,” was arrested in connection with Roach’s murder, the complaint says.
Tyren Dickson is accused of fatally shooting Roach, who was pregnant, in October 2023, according to WRDW-TV, which first reported on the lawsuit. The case against Dickson is pending, per the news outlet.
Now, Dixon, 26, is suing the Barnwell County Sheriff’s Office and Sheriff Steven W. Griffith on claims of negligence, false arrest and imprisonment, malicious prosecution and defamation.
Sheriff Griffith didn’t return McClatchy News’ requests for comment on April 16 and April 17.
“Imagine walking off a plane excited to see your family, but instead, you are accosted by police, handcuffed, and placed in a jail with no explanation, only to be told the next day by a judge that you are being charged for the brutal crime of first-degree murder — an unfathomable crime you never committed,” Robert Goings, one of the attorneys representing Dixon, of Goings Law Firm LLC, said in a statement to McClatchy News on April 17.
“We take our freedom and liberty for granted until they are wrongfully stripped from us,” Goings said.
Dixon has yet to receive a formal apology from the sheriff’s office, Goings and his co-counsel, Joe McCulloch, of McCulloch & Schillaci, told McClatchy News.
What led to his arrest?
When Dixon was apprehended on Sept. 30, it was his first time being accused of a crime, the lawsuit says.
The sheriff’s office secured arrest warrants without looking at physical evidence and after ignoring exculpatory evidence that could be found online.
Dixon’s arrest was “the product of fundamental police investigative failures, and shoddy, incompetent, and utterly inexcusable actions of the (Barnwell County Sheriff’s Office),” his attorneys wrote in the complaint.
Had deputies searched Dixon’s name on Google, they would’ve found information on his Newberry College football career, including his physical characteristics and photos of him, according to the filing.
The fact that Dixon’s appearance didn’t fit the description of the suspect, Dickson, is “easily determined by a simple exercise of fundamental police work,” the complaint says.
On Dec. 24, the Barnwell County Sheriff’s Office announced the other man’s arrest.
His time in Boston jails
After Massachusetts State Police apprehended Dixon on Sept. 30, he appeared in court and agreed to be extradited to South Carolina, the complaint says.
In response to McClatchy News’ request for comment, Massachusetts State Trooper Brandon Doherty confirmed via email on April 17 that police arrested Dixon that day “due to a warrant for his arrest originating in South Carolina.”
State police declined to comment further due to the pending litigation.
Dixon was then taken to a Boston jail, the Suffolk County Detention Facility, and was to be picked up by the Barnwell County Sheriff’s Office, according to the complaint.
“However, the (sheriff’s office) negligently and without cause left Dixon in Massachusetts jails,” the complaint says.
At the jail from Oct. 1 to Oct. 17, the complaint says Dixon “first witnessed the true depravity of mankind.”
Some of detainees were individuals convicted of murders and rapes, according to the complaint. Others were self-proclaimed Nazis as well as accused gang members, the filing says.
He witnessed violent beatings and was confined to a cold, bare cell inhabited by rats and mice that crawled “over him at night,” the complaint says.
Then his situation became “worse” at another Boston jail, the South Bay House of Correction, where he was detained Oct. 17 through Oct. 31, according to the complaint.
Dixon, while housed with “dangerous” inmates, endured abuse and humiliation from three detention guards who were in charge of him and 149 other detainees, the complaint says.
Solitary confinement
On Oct. 31, Dixon was taken to Rhode Island and put in solitary confinement “without cause or clarification” at the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Center in Central Falls, according to the complaint.
During three weeks in solitary he “became disorientated, anxious and suffered a nervous breakdown,” his attorneys wrote in the filing.
Then, on Nov. 20, Dixon was taken to New York and put on a plane with other inmates, according to the complaint, which says he was flown to Oklahoma.
He was detained in Oklahoma for four days, then jailed in Georgia, at the Irwin County Detention Center, the complaint says.
On Dec. 6, Barnwell County deputies picked him up in Georgia and brought him to South Carolina, according to the complaint.
Following his booking and interrogation, he was let go, the complaint says.
A demand for answers
During his weekslong imprisonment, the U.S. Marshals Service transferred Dixon to different jails, according to the complaint.
The federal agency didn’t immediately return McClatchy News’ request for comment.
“67 days in a young man’s life are critical, but especially to a young professional athlete,” McCulloch told McClatchy News.
Time “was stolen from Ty, and can never be regained in this lawsuit or by any means,” McCulloch said.
Dixon demands a jury trial through the lawsuit and also seeks an unspecified amount in damages.
“Most importantly,” he wants to “bring awareness,” according to his counsel.
“Ty’Ran’s life has been forever changed,” Goings and McCulloch said. “We want answers. We want justice. We demand an apology.”
This story was originally published April 17, 2025 at 2:02 PM with the headline "Football player jailed for 2 months was wrongly accused of murder, SC suit says."
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