Dispute Over Land Prompts 13-Hour Standoff Between a Family and Deputies; Two Officers Killed

AP via TBO ^ | December 9,2003 | Jeffrey Collins

[John W]

ABBEVILLE, S.C. (AP) - A father and son angered by a state plan to seize some of their land allegedly shot and killed an officer who went to the home, sparking a 13-hour standoff that ended in a "horrendous gunfight" in which another officer was killed, authorities and neighbors said. At least 100 officers surrounded the rural home of Arthur Bixby in western South Carolina on Monday. Bixby's wife then holed up in an apartment in town and threatened to shoot bystanders if her husband or son were injured; she was promptly arrested, State Law Enforcement Division Chief Robert Stewart said.

It began Monday morning when a magistrate's officer went to the house in a rural part of the state to follow up on an incident from the previous week involving a dispute between Department of Transportation workers and someone from the house, officials said.

When the officer failed to return, two deputies went to the Bixby home looking for him.

What happened next is unclear, but the deputies called for help and law enforcement officials surrounded the home, and the standoff began.

Eleven hours later, officers unsuccessfully tried to storm the home and were shot at with powerful weapons, Stewart said.

"I've never seen so much force," Stewart said. None of the family members tried to negotiate with officers during the standoff.

"This was planned," Stewart said.

The gunfight lasted about 10 minutes and police fired tear gas inside the home. Bixby's son, 36-year-old Steven Bixby, surrendered. Two hours later, officers entered the home and arrested Arthur Bixby, who apparently was wounded in the gunfight. He was hospitalized and his condition was not available early Tuesday.

No formal charges had been filed as of early Tuesday.

At some point during the standoff, the Bixbys destroyed two remote control robots authorities sent into the house to figure out what was happening, Stewart said.

Inside the home, authorities found a dead deputy and what they described as anti-American literature and suicide notes. Similar material also was found inside the apartment in town where Bixby's wife was arrested. Authorities did not say whose apartment it was.

Stewart said the family had prepared for the standoff and fortified the house's doors to make it harder for police to break in.

Authorities identified the two dead officers as Danny Wilson and Donnie M. Ouzts.

Ouzts apparently had been shot from a distance with a rifle, state Public Safety spokesman Sid Gaulden said; Wilson was found inside the home. Authorities would not say which one first went to the house.

Gene Land, Bixby's neighbor who lives about a half-mile away, said Steven Bixby was angry because the state planned to take some of his land to widen the highway. The Bixbys had lived in the house for more than 10 years, Land said.

A dispute Thursday between state transportation workers and someone from the home on Highway 72 precipitated the incident, DOT spokesman Pete Poore said.

AP-ES-12-09-03 0519EST

[Cultural Jihad]

"If you break valid, Constitutional laws, eventually people with guns will come to arrest you."

Go cry me a river, and take your whine to Handgun Control, Inc.

[At _War_With_Liberals]

But Justice dept lawyers refused to search Mossaoui's computer in the weeks before 9-11.

[visualops]

Update 12-11

http://www.thecarolinachannel.com/news/2696793/detail.html

Abbeville County's Highway 72 was still wide open. The phones hadn't started blaring yet. Police radios were cackling, but the messages were not yet as dire. It was just before 9:30 a.m. on Dec. 8, and a legal assistant in the South Carolina Attorney General's Office was checking her voice mail.
Rita O'Neal punched the keys on her phone that led to a waiting message.
"Yes, Rita, this is Rita Bixby." The voice on the record message was familiar.
"I live at 4 Union Church Road at the junction of 72 and the corner of Horton Drive. I've talked to you before, and they have, the state has decided they were going to come in and take our property."
"My husband and my son are there and there is a shootout going on because they're not going to take our land. No one has approached us and asked us if they could negotiate or anything. They just simply came onto our land and started taking it and there is a shootout there."
O'Neal eventually remembered who Rita Bixby was. She was the mother of a 36-year-old man who had been fighting extradition to his home state of New Hampshire. O'Neal had last spoken to the Bixby family in September.
But now it was Dec. 8 and if what the voice on the message said was true, something very wrong was happening in Abbeville County.
----snip---
Within minutes, Senior Assistant Attorney General Sonny Jones had listened to the message. Minutes later, O'Neal was on the phone with Abbeville County Sheriff Charles Goodwin. She told him what the Bixby woman had said in the message. As she talked, Goodwin interrupted her.
In a report she submitted to her superiors later, O'Neal wrote, "He...said he would have to call me back...there was an officer down."

”Live Free Or Die!”

Rita's son Steven Bixby had a lot of love for the state of New Hampshire. Or, at least, he said he did.
Just a day after the Abbeville County coroner took two beloved law enforcement officer into the morgue, the squat 36-year-old alleged killer stood in a magistrate's courtroom and declared, "I'm originally from New Hampshire where the motto is 'Live Free or Die!'"
Bixby would go on to cite from the New Hampshire constitution and use it as source material for his perceived right to revolution. What he did not tell the assembled law enforcement officials and reporters was that if he had been living in New Hampshire, he would not be as free as he might have wanted.
The fact was, the state of New Hampshire wanted Steven Bixby and had for many years.
As early as March 1, 1994, Bixby had been in New Hampshire's Grafton County Superior Court facing charges of operating a motor vehicle on a revoked license. Bixby had a drunken driving conviction on his record, as well as several other moving violations. They were nothing serious, but his convictions eventually warranted a jail sentence. A judge sentenced Bixby to a few months in jail, a $500 fine, and a year on probation.
According to the assistant sheriff of Grafton County, Capt. Paul Leavitt, Bixby failed to ever pay the fine. Leavitt said Bixby also failed to show up at a state probation office to begin his year of probation. The county issued a warrant for Bixby's arrest.
Leavitt said investigators eventually discovered that Bixby was living in South Carolina. The state issued a fugitive arrest warrant and began to try to extradite Bixby back to New Hampshire,
According to the South Carolina attorney general's spokesperson, Trey Walker, South Carolina will not extradite a person to serve a sentence in another state of less than one year. Walker said New Hampshire wanted Bixby to serve a nine-month sentence.
The South Carolina Attorney General's Office dealt with the case from 2000 until 2003.
During those years, few people had reason to suspect that within a few months some of the top members of South Carolina government and law enforcement would be in the middle of a brief but violent attempt at revolution on a back country highway.

A Letter From Union Church Road

Many of those people were about to receive letters from the Bixby family, but most of the letters were going to arrive too late. At least one state office received its copy while the shootout was in progress.
In less than 900 words, Arthur and Rita Bixby stated their case.
----snip---
“The military is scattered all over the world allegedly protecting our rights. Wrong! … The military should be in this Country (sic) defending OUR RIGHTS!” the letter read.

Full text of the Bixby letter here:
http://www.thecarolinachannel.com/news/2696748/detail.html

Rita Bixby Phone Call Transcript
http://www.thecarolinachannel.com/news/2696610/detail.html

[sauropod]

I read the Bixby letter and in there, they charge that other property owners had their property simply taken and their driveway access blocked just like the Bixbys. I notice that the article that you posted did not refer to that, and seems an attempt to smear the son (even if the New Hampshire charges are true).

I do not condone the violence, but i can understand the rage that the Bixbys must have felt when the utility work would have cut off access to their driveway!!!

The JBT from the SC DOT didn't help matters either, apparently.

Maybe CJ's much vaunted investigative skills can see if their charge about other property owners losing their property in the same way is true? /sarc

[Cultural Jihad]

Looks like Steven Bixby graduated from scofflaw ideologue to cold-blooded murderer.

[visualops]

A certain amount of the Bixby's complaints and statements seem disconnected. He makes statements about NH, but is supposedly fighting extradition. For someone who seems to demand going by the book etc, he doesn't follow his own advice. If this is really about just the land, then why not present the documentation to everyone from the zoning board and DOT to the local news? One comment that caught my eye, was the statement that after the highway work, they actually would be better off. IOW, the highway would end up farther away from them than it is now- implying the occupation and work on their land would be temporary.
I'd like to see the local news follow up on the issue if others' land has indeed been taken without compensation and/or legal right.
I will post more later when I get home- not cool to FReep at work lol.

[sauropod]

My question still stands. Is there independent verification of the Bixby's claims about other properties being impacted in the same way and with the same heavy-handed JBT manner from the SC DOT?

[visualops]

I'm wondering the same thing since I haven't seen anything about that.
I emailed the guy at WYFF who wrote the most recent story, and asked if he was going to do some digging and do a followup piece. I noted that given the continued rapid growth of the Greenville area, it's quite possible these sorts of concerns (bullying or deceit by DOT, property rights) will come up again.

[Freedom4US]

As far as eminent domain in general - it's perfectly fine (well, sorta) when used for the public good - like highways. Not strip malls or car dealerships.

The problem as I see it - a nice old lady on a fixed income has lived in her house for 45 years. They need the land, so they make what they feel is a generous offer - 20% over fair market value or whatnot. Everybody is fairly compensated right? Wrong. Because, when our proverbial nice old lady tries to find ANOTHER house - guess what - she can't afford to live there. In my mind, eminent domain is fine PROVIDED those involved provide compensation to secure an equivalent domicile and land, along with all moving expenses and associated costs. Anything else is theft pretty much.

[countrydummy]

There is much more to this story than we are being told! Of course the media are going to make the Bixby's out to be the nuts of the world, and I can read between the lines! Not like some that have posted on this thread who have their heads so far up the goberments a**!!!

[Poohbah]

There is much more to this story than we are being told!

Then tell us the missing part of the story. From what I've seen, it's a case of a few Damnyankees starting a firefight with the cops over land that they didn't own.

Of course the media are going to make the Bixby's out to be the nuts of the world, and I can read between the lines!

Well, they definitely acted nuts. Threatening innocent bystanders, shooting a cop in the back, and shooting a handcuffed man--Loo-SEE, you got some 'SPLAININ' to do!

[countrydummy]

Well, much to your delight, I read the other thread this morning.......the lady is a nut! She apparently was fighting a no win situation. Their fight and reasoning for the shoot out is totally unjustifiable from what I read this morning.

However, this will happen again. It will happen in cases where there is real abuse of eminent domain.......and I am sure these future defenders of their lands, will all be equated to these 3. That will be the shame of it all for sure.

[Catspaw]

Sauropod, it wasn't their land to begin with. When the previous owner gave/sold the state the right of way to expand the highway back in 1960, the deed to the house was amended at that time and the sale of the right of way to the state was duly noted on the deed when he sold the house to the Bixbys. The deed would have reflected the original legal description of the house, but would have also specifically referenced the legal description of the right of way as an exception to the legal description of the property they bought.

[Catspaw]

This wasn't a case of eminent domain. The previous owner had sold the state the right to the property for road expansion back in 1960, and had the Bixbys looked at their deed at the time of purchase of the property, it would be listed on the deed.

[countrydummy]

I understand that now.....I have to say, I wanted to hear more of this from their side, and I KNOW how dirty and underhanded a DOH can be!!!!!!!!! I am still in a 4 year battle nightmare!!!!!!!! with them!!!!!

[Catspaw]

You'll hear more from their side as the case goes forward. One of the area TV stations had some video of the son ranting and I suspect he'll do the same whenever he's got a court appearance--well, at least until his lawyer tells him to shut up.

[countrydummy]

I have seen one of the videos, and what Steve said was true! However, not in this case! Unfortunately, these folks believed it to be so, so much that they took lives that should not have been taken, and God forbide this happens again, but with the high handed abuse of emient domain cases happening all over the country in real circumstances and abuses, this is going to happen more!

It appears to me that the wife, just could not accept the fact that the easement was part of her deed. There are reasons for arguement there, but we would have to talk all day on that! LOL

I still wonder at what was meant by the surveys she said was done twice? That does still bother me some. Did the state try and take more than they were given in 1960 or did she misread it or just ignorned it?????

[Catspaw]

Who knows why she thought it was her land--maybe she thought the right of way on the deed "went away" when the property was sold. Maybe she thought that despite the deed, she'd be damned if the state could have "her" property. Maybe she was acting even worse than she did in New Hampshire when it came to someone else taking "her" property (despite it being the state's property). Maybe she's just crank who ended up getting her son and husband involved in killing not one, but two cops over land that wasn't theirs in the first place.

Given the nature of this family, you can expect them to be quite outspoken to the media--and doing so will sink them sure as...well, you know.

[countrydummy]

Agreeded!

[Cultural Jihad]

... and I am sure these future defenders of their lands, will all be equated to these 3. That will be the shame of it all for sure.

No one will remember any of these losers the moment they get the justice they deserve.