Fireworks are the norm for Fourth of July celebrations, but the kind of fireworks that erupted at the Orangeburg-Calhoun Law Enforcement Complex on the July 4 holiday 20 years ago were anything but normal.

On July 4, 1988, a heavily armed man drove a truck loaded with gasoline into the Law Enforcement Complex, sparking a gun battle and fire that wounded four officers and nearly destroyed the facility.

The man who launched the attack was the late Clyde Burdell Myers of Branchville, who would later tell The Times and Democrat in a chilling interview nine years after the assault that he was “standing up for my civil rights” when he crashed a truck through the LEC sally port, poured gasoline onto the floor of the facility, set fire to it and engaged in a 20-minute gun battle with law enforcement.

Authorities were already familiar with Myers. In 1982, he staged a protest sit-in at Family Health Centers for several hours. In 1985, he shackled himself to a chair in protest during a county council meeting. Then, there was a dispute earlier in 1988 with Orangeburg County over a road adjoining Myers’ property and his subsequent arrest for malicious injury to county property -- an arrest he said led him to retaliate by attacking the LEC several months later.

After the county failed to provide Myers with information about the contested road within the 10-day deadline he set, Myers said he made good on his threat to plow the road up. He was arrested but the charge was dropped against him after the public defender and the county attorney worked out a deal, Myers said. He said he signed off on the deal, but added, “That still wasn’t going to stop me from getting back at them. I didn’t have in my mind what I was going to do, but I knew I was going to get back at them.”

It was “probably almost a year later” that he attacked the LEC, Myers said.

Wheels in motion

Myers’ plan of revenge began to unfold.

“I travel around right smart, and I had a full-size camper on my truck. Me and my wife had been to Hunting Island State Park. I was planning different things and on the way back I noticed a dual-wheel truck for sale in Ruffin,” Myers recalled.

“I think I paid $1,400 for it. I had two gasoline drums -- one for farm purposes and one for cars and trucks. I loaded the two drums up on the truck and placed big truck tires around the drums so they wouldn’t roll around and bang against each other and throw a spark. I drove to Orangeburg to a station near the Wayside Furniture store and filled up both drums. Each one held 250 gallons, so that was a total of 500 gallons. Each drum had a spigot. I had them set up in the truck so the gas would pour out when I opened spigots up ... pour out on the floor of the complex and not in the truck.”

Myers said he then put two shotguns and a .306, five-shot rifle in the truck.

“I also had bought a used gas mask from the Army surplus store on King Street in Charleston. Then I went to this sporting goods store in Columbia near SLED. I looked at two or three bulletproof vests. The sales people in the store helped me. I bought a good one for $500,” he said.

After what he described as “long-term planning,” Myers said he sent his wife to visit relatives.

“I told my wife, ’You can go on down to Charleston to your children down there.’ I didn’t tell her. She didn’t know what I was planning on doing, and didn’t know what was going to take place. But I thought I might die,” he said.

Early in the morning on July 4, 1988, Myers was busy preparing a fireworks show of his own.

“I still don’t understand why I planned it for July 4. I don’t know why I done that, but I did. I’ll admit it. I was the one,” he said.

Myers said he was “willing to die” as he drove to the Orangeburg-Calhoun Law Enforcement Complex that morning and “expected the gasoline drums to blow up” and kill him “along with the rest of them -- maybe dozens or hundreds.”

“I was willing to die in there. But things didn’t quite work out either for the county or me,” he said.

He remembered crashing his truck through both gates to the sally port.

“I drove the truck through the first door and tore it down, then I went right on through the second door. I had to back up and turn around because I wanted the truck about middle ways in the sally port. I got out of the truck and opened both drums and let the gasoline run out,” Myers said. “I waited until the gas must have been a couple of inches deep on the floor. I soaked a torch made of rags in the gasoline, walked around to the front end of the truck, struck a match to the soaked rags and throwed it.”

“Poof!” he said, extending his arms upward. “The gas started burning. Fire was everywhere. Metal was melting. I was hid in front of the truck. I don’t know whether somebody tried to come in there, but I got my guns, and I started shooting. Every time I figured somebody was coming through a door, I would shoot through the door. I never could get a shot at any particular person. They was behind the bulletproof walls and desks in there. I don’t think nary officer got hurt. They claim they did. I was the only one that got hurt. I got shot six times.”

A local doctor later told his wife his groin area “was blowed open like a cut watermelon,” Myers said.

“They shot my thumb off. When that happened, I said there wasn’t no need for me to stay in that inferno fire after it didn’t blow up. I was expecting for it to blow up, kill me instant and I don’t know how many more ... maybe,” he said. “They shot so many times. I think they finally shot me with a machine gun, and they cut my thumb off. Then I couldn’t hold no guns no more. I was using an automatic 12-gauge shotgun, and I couldn’t hold the gun no more. I just walked on out and laid on the grass out there.”

After undergoing surgery for his wounds at the Regional Medical Center, Myers was transferred to the Broad River (Department of Corrections) infirmary where he stayed for months, he said. When he was released from the S.C. Department of Mental Health, Myers went to live with his daughter in North Charleston, he said, adding that he was told he could not come back to Orangeburg County. But two years later, “I took a chance and came back home. My wife stayed in North Charleston.

Nothing happened. No law officer came to arrest me at my home. So I called her up and told her, ‘Come on back and see what’s going to take place.’ Nothing took place as far as I know,” Myers said.

Psychiatrists initially said Myers was incompetent to stand trial for the LEC attack, but in 1998 a psychiatrist re-evaluated his competency and told the court that he was competent to stand trial.

Waiving his right to a jury trial, Myers pleaded guilty but mentally ill to assault with intent to kill, two counts of assault and battery with intent to kill, possession of a firearm during the commission of a violent crime and second-degree arson.

First Circuit Judge Costa Pleicones reduced all of Myers’ sentences to probation.

“While these are significant and horrifying crimes, he was mentally ill due to organic personality syndrome,” Pleicones said. “He knew what he was doing then, but couldn’t control himself.”

The condition was corrected with a pacemaker and “the physician stated that he is no longer a threat to anyone or himself,” the judge added. “Thank goodness for modern medicine.”

No regrets

Asked in The T&D interview if he had any regrets about his attack on the Law Enforcement Complex, Myers said, “No.”

“People got to stand up for their rights. If you don’t stand up for your rights, you ain’t nobody,” he said. “I think I’m a good person, but I’m not going to let Tom, Dick and Harry run over me. I ain’t going to allow that. I’d die first. People shouldn’t run over people like that just because they got a little authority.”

Myers died at the age of 80 in December 2001.

T&D Regional Editor Carol Barker can be reached at cbarker@times anddemocrat.com and 803-533-5525. Comment on this and other stories at www.TheTandD.com.

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