For more than a century, September has carried a distinction in South Carolina law enforcement history that no other month shares.
The South Carolina Fraternal Order of Police’s historical record includes 56 law enforcement officers whose watch ended in September. No other month has recorded as many.
Those deaths span generations of policing, from town marshals and rural policemen to deputies, troopers, detention officers and municipal police officers. The earliest September death in the record occurred in 1891. The most recent came in 2024.
The number alone establishes September’s place in the record. The individual cases behind it show how that history accumulated.
56 Officers Across More Than 130 Years
The earliest September death recorded in the data is Midway Town Marshal Edward Carter Henry Burpee, who died September 12, 1891. He was 22 years old.
More than 130 years later, South Carolina State Transport Police Officer First Class Mark Stanley Reynolds died on September 4, 2024.
Between those two deaths are officers from agencies large and small and from nearly every era of modern law enforcement in South Carolina.
Gunfire accounts for 26 of the 56 September deaths, making it by far the leading cause. Five officers died in incidents classified as vehicle pursuits. Automobile crashes, assaults and motorcycle crashes each account for four deaths.
Other causes represented in the September record include COVID-19, vehicular assault, heart attacks, duty-related illness, drowning and stabbing.
The categories describe how officers died. They do not describe the officers themselves, the work that brought them to those moments, or the circumstances their families and agencies faced afterward.
Those stories are found in the individual records.
Five Officers, Five Different Circumstances
On September 27, 1985, South Carolina Highway Patrol Trooper First Class Bruce Kenneth Smalls stopped a recreational vehicle being driven recklessly on Interstate 95 in Jasper County.
What appeared to be a traffic stop from the roadway involved something Smalls could not have known. The occupants had murdered the owner of the vehicle before the stop.
Smalls was shot and killed. He was 30 years old, a U.S. Army veteran of the Vietnam War, and had served with the Highway Patrol for nine years.
Seven years later, on September 25, 1992, York County Deputy Sheriff James Brent McCants stopped a vehicle on Dave Lyle Boulevard near Interstate 77 in Rock Hill.
The car had been stolen during a carjacking in Charlotte approximately two hours earlier. McCants was shot and killed during the stop. Both occupants fled and were arrested within hours.
McCants was 23. He was a U.S. Army veteran who had previously served with the Rock Hill Police Department before joining the York County Sheriff’s Office.
The September record also extends well beyond roadway encounters.
On September 17, 2000, Detention Officer Alvin Sherman Glenn was returning inmates to their cells at the Richland County Detention Center when three inmates attacked him during an escape attempt.
Glenn was overpowered, beaten, and strangled. The inmates reached the roof of the jail before they were taken back into custody.
Glenn was 59 and had served at the detention center for five years. The facility was later renamed the Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center in his honor.
Fourteen years later, Charleston County Deputy Sheriff Joseph John Matuskovic responded with other deputies to a disturbance at an apartment complex.
Two deputies working an overtime assignment requested assistance with a man causing a disturbance outside. The man returned to his apartment. As deputies attempted to make contact with him, he fired through the apartment door with an AK-47-style rifle.
Matuskovic and another deputy were struck. Matuskovic was transported to the Medical University of South Carolina, where he died from his wounds on September 8, 2014.
He was 43 and had served in law enforcement for 17 years.
One year later, September ended with another South Carolina officer killed while responding to a call.
On the morning of September 30, 2015, Forest Acres Police Officer Gregory Thomas Alia and two other officers responded to a suspicious-person call at Richland Mall. They located the man in a van in the parking lot. He fled into the mall, and a struggle followed.
During the struggle, the man produced a stolen .40-caliber handgun and fatally shot Alia.
Alia was 32 and had served with the Forest Acres Police Department for seven years.
The five cases occurred over three decades and involved different agencies, assignments and circumstances. Together, they represent only a small part of the September record.
Three Dates Account for One-Quarter of the September Deaths
Another unusual concentration appears within the 56 deaths.
Four South Carolina officers in the record died on September 18. Six died on September 19. Four more died on September 20.
Fourteen officers died on those three calendar dates alone, accounting for exactly one-quarter of all September line-of-duty deaths in the historical record.
No common incident connects them. The deaths occurred across different years, agencies, and circumstances.
The four deaths recorded on September 18, for example, occurred in 1897, 1916, 1928, and 1931. Their causes included stabbing, gunfire, and an automobile crash.
The six September 19 deaths stretch from 1929 through 2021. They include an assault at the Greenville County Jail, gunfire deaths involving officers in Colleton and Greenville counties, a vehicular assault in Edgefield County, a Highway Patrol motorcycle crash, and a COVID-19 death involving a Spartanburg County deputy.
September 20 adds another four officers, with deaths recorded in 1925, 1930, 1977 and 1983.
The concentration is a feature of the calendar, not evidence that those dates carry some particular risk. What it does show is how much South Carolina law enforcement history fits into a relatively small part of September.
A Month Defined by the Record
These numbers do not show that September is inherently more dangerous for a South Carolina law enforcement officer than any other month.
The historical record does not establish that.
It establishes something narrower and more concrete.
More South Carolina law enforcement officers in the SCFOP record ended their watch in September than in any other month. Fifty-six officers, from 1891 through 2024, are part of that history.
Some served in jobs and agencies that officers today would immediately recognize. Others carried titles such as town marshal, rural policeman, constable, warden, or guard. Their deaths came during traffic stops, arrests, pursuits, calls for service, detention operations and other duties that reflected the law enforcement work of their time.
More than a century separates the earliest and most recent names. What connects them is the same historical record of service and loss.
South Carolina Officers Lost in the Line of Duty in September
Midway Town Marshal Edward Carter Henry Burpee – September 12, 1891
Brookland Police Department John R. Goss – September 18, 1897
Orangeburg Department of Public Safety Police Officer Christian James D. Wolfe – September 22, 1897
Clarendon County Magistrate’s Office Constable Samuel Thomas Tobias – September 2, 1899
Georgetown Police Department Officer James C. Scurry – September 29, 1900
South Carolina Department of Natural Resources Warden Louis Pressley Reeves – September 22, 1908
Chesterfield County Magistrate’s Office Constable James Maxie King – September 28, 1913
Marlboro County Rural Police Commission Rural Policeman Edward Jesse Alsobrooks Sr. – September 18, 1916
Marion County Sheriff’s Office Sheriff John McRoy Dozier – September 27, 1917
Marion County Sheriff’s Department Rural Police Officer George A. Davis – September 2, 1918
Sharon Police Department Town Marshal Tobias Rudolph Peninger – September 30, 1918
Charleston Police Department Policeman William Edward Raymond – September 10, 1919
Atlantic Coast Line Railroad Police Department Patrolman William Ashby Howard – September 1, 1925
Wagener Police Department Chief of Police Mike Kitrell Knotts Sr. – September 20, 1925
Greenville County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Sheriff George Matthew Myers – September 22, 1926
Anderson County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Sheriff Luther Allen Martin – September 18, 1928
Greenville County Jail Guard Dock M. Garrett – September 19, 1929
United States Department of Justice – ATF Special Agent Mack Carroll Parsons – September 20, 1930
Horry County Police Department County Policeman Benjamin Manning Owens – September 18, 1931
Charleston Police Department Patrolman Lawrence Marion Strock – September 10, 1932
Newberry City Health Department Health Officer Walter Thompson Longshore – September 15, 1933
Colleton County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Sheriff Herman Russell Saunders – September 12, 1940
South Carolina Highway Patrol Patrolman Harlan M. Smith – September 23, 1940
South Carolina Highway Patrol Patrolman Joseph Pierce Monroe – September 28, 1941
Holly Hill Police Department Daniel Dantzler Sweatman – September 11, 1943
Greeleyville Police Department Night Policeman Walter Dellington Evans – September 14, 1945
Newberry Police Department Police Officer John David Livingston – September 2, 1947
South Carolina Department of Natural Resources Officer Robert Joseph McIntyre – September 17, 1956
South Carolina Highway Patrol Patrolman Harry Boyd Ray – September 7, 1958
Charleston Police Department Lieutenant Fearn S. Thompson – September 9, 1958
Easley Police Department Patrolman Woodrow W. Nalley – September 7, 1959
Greenville County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Sheriff John Pershing Martin – September 12, 1965
South Carolina Highway Patrol Patrolman Marion Charles Steele – September 10, 1966
Fairfield County Rural Police Commission Deputy Sheriff James Hubert Murphy Sr. – September 26, 1970
Fairfield County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Sheriff Alfred Leroy Perry – September 26, 1970
Colleton County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Sheriff Steven Anthony Breland – September 19, 1977
Laurens County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Sheriff Sherman Robert Massey – September 20, 1977
Laurens County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Sheriff William Eugene Jones – September 23, 1982
Greenville Police Department Police Officer Mathew Montgomery Beacham Jr. – September 20, 1983
South Carolina Highway Patrol Trooper First Class Bruce Kenneth Smalls – September 27, 1985
Horry County Police Department Sergeant Henry O’dell Stalvey Jr. – September 14, 1986
York County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Sheriff James Brent McCants – September 25, 1992
Greenville Police Department Police Officer James Russell Sorrow – September 19, 1996
Edgefield County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Sheriff Allen Peter Myers – September 19, 2000
Richland County Detention Center Detention Officer Alvin Sherman Glenn – September 17, 2000
South Carolina Highway Patrol Lance Corporal Jonathan Shea Nash – September 19, 2009
Charleston County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Sheriff Joseph John Matuskovic – September 8, 2014
Forest Acres Police Department Police Officer Gregory Thomas Alia – September 30, 2015
Anderson Police Department Sergeant Ethan Ross Kaskin – September 25, 2020
Barnwell Police Department Police Officer Stephen Unique Jones – September 12, 2021
Lake City Police Department Lieutenant John Stewart – September 17, 2021
Barnwell County Sheriff’s Office Jailer Deputy John Henry Williams III – September 17, 2021
Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Office Deputy First Class John William Berry III – September 19, 2021
Columbia Police Department Master Police Officer Tyrell Antwan Owens-Riley – September 24, 2022
Richland County Sheriff’s Department Deputy Sheriff Jacob Eric Salrin – September 29, 2023
South Carolina State Transport Police Division (SCSTP) Mark Stanley Reynolds – September 4, 2024
