I recently filled up at a big BP gas station in Beaufort, SC as I was leaving town. There was all sorts of odd stuff going down, the place looked like it needed a major undercover operation plus hidden police cameras. And this was early on a bright shiny Sunday afternoon. My head was on a swivel the entire time, believe me.
The point being, it wouldn’t surprise me to see a small town gas station used as a nexus for a pile of criminal activity.
SC has a high black population....
It’s all over the south. Places that are no more than gang HQ for drug selling, plus the EBT crowd. Sounds like in this case, the local po-po might be paid to be elsewhere.