Warrant for SC congressman’s wife considered but not issued, Lexington sheriff says
The Lexington County Sheriff’s Department considered issuing an arrest warrant against Roxanne Wilson, the wife of U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson, following a heated dispute at an eldercare facility late last month.
Ultimately, authorities determined no crime was committed and did not issue a warrant.
A 15-page incident report obtained by The State under South Carolina’s Freedom of Information law reveals that the sheriff’s department investigated Roxanne Wilson’s actions during two incidents at the facility on Sept. 29: First, when she allegedly forced her mother to take medication, and second, when she had a subsequent encounter with a staff member at the care home that involved Wilson putting her hands on the staffer’s shoulders.
But despite the wishes of a nursing home employee who told deputies that she wanted to charge Wilson with assault, the sheriff’s office decided not to press charges after consulting with the 11th Circuit Solicitor’s Office and Lexington County Chief Magistrate Judge Matthew Johnson, according to the incident report The State obtained from the Lexington County Sheriff’s Department.
“After a thorough investigation, as well as a review of the evidence and statements in this matter, no charges will be filed in this case. We arrived at this result after detectives consulted the Solicitor’s Office, which advised the case had no prosecutorial merit,” Lexington County Sheriff Jay Koon said in a statement to The State on Tuesday.
“Ultimately, a detective presented the findings and evidence gathered during our investigation to a magistrate judge, who determined there was no probable cause to make an arrest. In light of these developments, the case will be closed,” Koon said.
Roxanne Wilson’s attorney, Jake Moore, said he was not surprised that a warrant was not sworn out against Roxanne.
“She has done nothing wrong,” Moore said. “The whole thing has been very unfortunate, but this case clearly has nothing to do with criminality on the part of anybody.”
How confrontation began
The saga began on the morning of Sept. 29 when staffers at the Columbia Presbyterian Community care home on Davega Drive tried to convince Roxanne Wilson’s 98-year-old mother, Martha Dusenbury, to take her medication. She refused. When Wilson, who is 73 and one of her mother’s primary family caregivers, arrived at the home around noon, staff members told her that Dusenbury had not taken her medication.
What happened next is in dispute. But at about 2 p.m. on that day, a Friday, sheriff’s deputies were summoned to the elder care home by staffers who claimed Wilson forced a fork into her mother’s mouth, swore at her and poured water in her mouth to get Dusenbury to take the medication, according to documents.
Care home staff also told deputies that they were mandated to report alleged abuse to the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control and that the facility wished to place a trespass notice on Wilson.
DHEC characterized the incident as alleged “neglect or exploitation, suspected or confirmed abuse,” according to DHEC documents based on a report from the home.
At some point during the contentious events that followed, Wilson called both Lexington County Sheriff Jay Koon and her son, South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson, according to the report.
Sheriff Koon did not go to the scene at any point, said a spokesperson from his office.
In a statement from his office last week, Alan Wilson said that he was not at the facility when the incidents occurred and said his office was not involved.
The sheriff’s department report describes how the events of Sept. 29 escalated when Roxanne Wilson, with deputies present and recording events on a body camera, placed her hands on a staffer’s shoulders and told her, “Jennifer, I’m not mad at you, but I want you to tell your staff not to f--- with me.”
The staffer, Jennifer Raymond, whose back was against a wall throughout the encounter, then told Wilson, “I’m not going to tell anybody a threat, Roxanne,” the incident report said.
Roxanne Wilson then said, “That is not a threat,” prompting Raymond to reply, “Yes, it is what you just did.”
The incident report said Raymond then asked a deputy who had witnessed the exchange, “Did you just hear that?”
The deputy replied, “Yes, Ma’am,” the report said.
The State has requested a copy of the body camera video, but the sheriff’s department declined to release it.
Raymond on Wednesday declined through an intermediary to comment “at this time.”
The incident report, drawn from statements by three deputies at the scene as well as an investigator assigned to review the events, offer the most complete account of the incident, which was first revealed in initial reports filed with DHEC and a partial incident report from the Lexington County Sheriff’s Department made public in response to FOI requests by The State newspaper.
After Wilson placed her hands on Raymond’s shoulders, Sgt. Christopher Riccardi, the sheriff’s department supervisor on the scene, advised Raymond that she could press charges of assault and battery, according to the report.
Raymond initially appeared ambivalent about pursuing assault charges, asking deputies if she could give them an answer after she spoke with an attorney and Franklin Fant, the home’s president and CEO, the report said.
Within minutes this changed.
While Raymond and Fant went to a separate room to speak with an attorney over the phone, Ricciardi spoke with Roxanne Wilson and Alan Wilson, who joined by speakerphone. When Ricciardi informed the Wilsons that there was a possibility of an assault charge, Roxanne Wilson walked away and entered the room where Raymond and Fant were meeting, according to the documents.
“Are you claiming that I assaulted you? I did not assault you,” Wilson said, according to the report. Raymond told investigators that Wilson “was in her face,” prompting her to take a step back. Raymond also said she could hear an unidentified voice on Wilson’s speakerphone telling her to get out of the room.
Raymond later told investigators she wanted to get away “because she had seen Mrs. Wilson’s temper, and it was unpredictable,” according to the report.
”Mrs. Raymond said she was afraid of not knowing what Mrs. Wilson was going to do,” and investigator wrote.
When Ricciardi entered the room, his body camera showed Fant standing in the door frame between Raymond and Wilson, who appeared “upset” and was raising her voice, according to the report.
After the deputy repeatedly asked Wilson to leave the room, Raymond told Ricciardi that she wanted to press charges against Wilson.
Although Ricciardi said that afternoon Raymond could pursue a criminal charge, another deputy at the scene doubted an assault had taken place.
“I do not believe there was probable cause to charge Wilson for assault,” wrote one deputy, who described the initial confrontation between Wilson and Raymond in a report dated Sept. 29. “I do not believe that Wilson had any intent to harm Raymond.”
About a week later, Ricciardi wrote in a report that he had changed his mind. Ricciardi wrote that he spoke with Wilson, asking if her intentions were “to hurt Jennifer (Raymond) and she replied no.”
“At the time of this report, there was no probable to make an arrest,” Ricciardi wrote on Oct. 6. “I explained to both parties that no charges were being made.”
Following the confrontation in the office, Ricciardi reviewed the body worn camera footage of the initial interaction between Raymond and Wilson. Ricciardi wrote that he “determined that the incident did not amount to an assault” and informed Raymond and Wilson that no charges were being made, according to the report.
The investigation may have been hampered by the reluctance of some of the witnesses.
One home staffer declined to give a written statement to officers, saying, “I didn’t know it was going to go this far.”
And both employees who witnessed Wilson give the pill to her mother “expressed concerns” to officers about getting involved in a situation with a “powerful” family, according to an investigator’s report.
Joe Wilson, elected in 2001, is the state’s second-senior member of Congress. Alan Wilson is the state’s chief law enforcement officer who can initiate investigations and has general supervisory responsibility for criminal prosecutions around the state. The Wilsons and Sheriff Koon are Republicans.
Fant, the Presbyterian home’s CEO, issued this statement Wednesday: “While we respect the decision of law enforcement, we also affirm that our organization has fulfilled our moral and legal obligations to the resident in this matter. We are not a party in our employee’s case, but the safety and well-being of our staff is of central importance to our ministry. Our front line health care workers provide the compassionate and quality care to our residents for which we’ve been known for almost 70 years.”
What led up to the incident?
The confusing scene outlined in incident reports obtained by The State began almost an hour and a half before law enforcement authorities were called, but court records suggest that friction between Wilson and the care home had been brewing for at least several months.
In legal filings, care home officials have previously said it was not able to provide adequate care for Dusenbury, who they argued needed to be transferred to a facility that could better care for her.
“Ms. Dusenbury requires a level of care that Presbyterian Communities of South Carolina cannot legally provide,” read a legal document, filed by the facility’s attorney in response to a. request for an injunction filed August 2023 in the Cayce-West Columbia Magistrate Court by Roxanne Wilson and her sister, Suzanne Carver.
In filings, the sisters say they wanted their mother to stay at the facility and sought an injunction that would allow Dusenbury to stay in her room. The lawsuit said the facility wanted to “evict” the mother, who had a contract to stay at the home.
The lawsuit was eventually dismissed from magistrate’s court. The issue is now before DHEC, according to Wilson’s lawyer, Moore.
On Sept 29, when Wilson arrived at the Columbia Presbyterian Community care center, two medical techs informed Wilson that her mother had refused to take her medication that morning. Dusenbury had repeatedly spat up her pill.
Wilson then tried to make her mother take her pill. However, the two med techs were concerned about Wilson’s methods, and they reported the incident to a supervisor, Cindy Robbins, around 12:30 p.m., according to an investigator’s notes.
Shortly before 2 p.m., the incident was reported to the sheriff’s office. The “call card” for the incident stated “The Resident’s daughter is abusing the resident” and “Resident was choked.”
The two medical techs told deputies that they had witnessed Roxanne Wilson using a fork to force medication down her mother’s throat and then pour water down her throat until she was “gagging.” One of the medical techs told deputies that Roxanne Wilson was “screaming and cursing” at her mother during the incident.
“You’re going to take this damn medicine,” Wilson said, according to the report.
This account was disputed by Wilson, who deputies found “lying across the bed” when they entered her mother’s room. Deputies also noted that Dusenbury, who was seated in a wheelchair, said nothing had happened. However, it was noted in the report that Dusenbury had dementia.
The facility’s account was also disputed by Wilson’s sister, Suzanne Carver, who arrived at the facility after the deputies and gave a statement.
Carver said that she was on the phone with her sister while she was attempting to give her mother medication. The sisters have power of attorney for their mother.
“You (Wilson) said, mama here take these two pills. And you said, you’ve gotten ‘em wet now you’re gonna have to take ‘em with water. And Mama said, no, I want coffee. And she put ‘em in her mouth and you said, okay, we’re going to lunch. It was noon. I heard it on the phone, I’m a witness,” Carver said, according to the incident report.
In a supplemental incident report, Carleisha Gilliam, a sheriff’s department investigator who was assigned the case on Oct. 2, wrote that Wilson’s actions “don’t appear excessive from a reasonable perspective.”
In making her determination, Gilliam indicated that, based on the medical tech’s statements, she believed that the fork was simply used to “transfer the wet medication” into her mouth. Wilson’s use of the fork “did not appear to be unusual, extreme or negligent,” wrote Gilliam, a member of the special victims unit.
She also noted that when deputies arrived, Dusenbury did not appear to be in distress.
Gilliam also questioned why, if the facility was concerned about Dusenbury’s safety, law enforcement authorities were not notified immediately. “It seems equally unusual that Mrs. Wilson was left alone with Mrs. Dusenbury,” Gilliam wrote.
“The facility alleged Mrs. Wilson of abuse for accomplishing what they had just been attempting to accomplish for themselves, with the only notable difference was that Mrs. Wilson was more persistent, and was alleged to have used harsher language while interacting with her mother.”
Wilson’s attorney Moore said, “Roxanne looked like a crazy maniac based on the story you-all (The State Media Co.) wrote, but she’s not — she’s just a lady trying to take care of her momma.”
