By Nicholas Charalambous
Independent-Mail
December 8, 2003

The man at the center of a police shooting and hostage taking in Abbeville County threatened workers with the state Department of Transportation with physical violence just three days before.

Transportation Department spokesman Pete Poore said a man last Thursday uprooted stakes to be used in the widening and realignment of S.C. 72 in front of the 4 Union Church Road home where Steve Bixby held off police Monday.

Last Thursday, someone in the house saw transportation department employees placing the stakes, came outside and made threats of physical violence that were considered serious enough for the local transportation department office to advise the Abbeville County Sheriff’s Office, Mr. Poore said.

"I don’t know exactly what he said," Mr. Poore said about the man. "He pulled the stakes out of the ground and threw them in the middle of the road."

The state had purchased all the needed right of way from the home’s previous owner, Haskell Johnson, in August 1960, when S.C. 72 was first conceived as a potential four-lane highway from Clinton to Atlanta, officials said.

The home, now titled in the name of Rita and Arthur Bixby, was purchased from Mr. Johnson’s estate in 1999, according to court records.

Construction near the Bixby home was set to begin Tuesday or Wednesday Mr. Poore said.

The existing highway, cutting diagonally in front of the Bixby property, was to be torn up and replaced by the new five-lane highway, planned to run farther away from and parallel to the home, according to a right of way map.

"He would have come out better," Mr. Poore said.

Planning for the first stretch of improvements to S.C. 72 through the town of Abbeville between S.C. 28 and Secondary Road 103 began in 2000 or 2001, according to Mr. Poore and Rick Green, a director at the Upper Savannah Council of Governments involved in the project.

The $9.46 million widening, part of a joint vision of Georgia and South Carolina transportation officials, was seen as a way to develop an alternate commercial corridor to Interstate 85 that could spur economic and industrial development, Mr. Green said.

No records were immediately available to indicate any objections lodged by the Bixby household against the project at official public hearings, Mr. Poore said. Mr. Green and Abbeville Assistant City Manager Nolan Wiggins also said they didn’t recall the project arousing any unusual hostility among local residents.

Nicholas Charalambous can be reached at (864) 260-1256 or by e-mail at charalambousnc@IndependentMail.com.

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