Category: News

Oconee County Public Library is pleased to announce a $10,000 gift donated by Lem Chastain in memory of his mother. Chastain, who has a home in Mountain Rest, established the memorial fund with the goal to support literacy in that community. However, it will also be used to benefit the rest of the county. Part of the Helen M. Chastain […]

A 39-year old man stands in Oconee General Sessions Court and admits his guilt in taking indecent liberties with a teenage girl. As part of a negotiated sentence, Jamie Garner Smith is pleading guilty to the charge of assault and battery second degree. The sentence, as recommended by assistant solicitor Lindsey Simmons, would be three years in prison, suspended to […]

Senator Lindsey Graham, back on familiar turf this afternoon, embarked on a tour of the Oconee manufacturing facility Lift Technologies on south highway 11. In tow was a camera crew, and it’s possible some of the video will show this year up in a Graham re-election commercial. At Lif-Tek today the parking lot was nearly full of employees’ vehicles and […]

A New Jersey man had been scheduled to appear in the Oconee General Sessions Court this week to answer to a criminal charge, but he wound up with an excuse acceptable to the court. The man was supposed to have caught a flight south at 4 yesterday morning. Trouble was, that flight and most others in the mid-Atlantic and northeast […]

Oconee County gets to see some of the hopefuls this week in the contest for a U-S Senate seat. The incumbent, Oconee County resident Lindsay Graham, returns to his stomping crowds for an appearance at 1 o’clock this afternoon at a local manufacturing plant. It’s there, we’re told, Graham apparently will do some filming for what could wind up as […]

Last night’s fire in Salem displaced five people–three adults and two children. But Joe Nichols, Salem Fire Marshall, says the three people who were in the home 308 S. Oak Street got out safely, and no one was hurt. The fire is believed to have started in a back bedroom, but its cause is under investigation, Nichols said. Those who […]

Nine criminal charges arose from a one-car accident Sunday evening at Seneca’s Dalton Road and Leila Street.  And the police say they seized drugs, money, liquor, and a gun as they investigated an accident involving a van driven by Aaron Bernard Black, 42, of Creek Drive, Seneca.  According to the police reports, Black wound up at OconeeMedicalCenter, where he was […]

  Oconee’s newly-formed transit advisory task force committee meets tomorrow night for the first time, and Chris Maldonado hopes to be there.  Maldonado is one of Walhalla’s strongest advocates for extending passenger bus service to the County Seat.   Maldonado relies on a bicycle to get around and, he says, “I want the “CAT” buses.”  The committee meets at 6 Thursday […]

Governor Haley delivers the State of the State address tonight to a joint session of the General Assembly, state and local leaders, and invited dignitaries. The speech will be tele-cast live at 7 by South Carolina ETV stations.

  Westminster leaders are taking an open mind when it comes to an arm of county government joining with an organization of public and private interests into the new Oconee Economic Alliance. The city council last night chose to join the alliance for one year and pay a membership fee of $3 thousand. But there were questions, whose answers weren’t […]