Cayce, SC (Paul Kirby) – The City of Cayce’s City Council met late into the night Thursday before voting to revoke the business license of the Knight’s Inn on Airport Boulevard. They had already suspended the license after the business’ owner allowed the property to become a hotbed of criminal activity over the past six months. The hearing wasn’t closed until approximately 11:00 p.m.
Chief Byron Snellgrove of the Cayce Department of Public Safety said several weeks ago that his department had responded to the property over 160 times in a three-month span. Snellgrove also said that the activities at the motel had taxed his department’s manpower and were a hindrance to other businesses around town that did their best to cooperate with the police and maintain order at their properties.
The crimes that were being committed at the Knight’s Inn included serious offenses, according to city officials. The police not only responded to petty drug crimes and other lesser offenses, they also were making cases for trafficking in methamphetamine and other hard drugs.
What worried officials most was the more serious crimes that were becoming common there. Officers responded to incidents that involved attempted murder, robbery, kidnapping, burglaries, and other serious offenses. Chief Snellgrove said the property owner was doing nothing to help curtail the offenses and was in fact taking steps that only made the problems worse. The last straw for Snellgrove occurred recently when an employee of the Knight's Inn would not let a victim use a telephone to call police after she alleged she had been assaulted on the property.
Even though the property owner’s lawyers argued against the revocation, the vote by Cayce’s City Council was unanimous.From this point forward, there will have to be some discussion as to what will happen to the property. It could be sold by its owner or licensed to someone else. No matter how things proceed from this point, anyone who is interested in reopening the property will certainly be watched closely so that an extraordinary step like this won’t have to happen again.