Gary “Bubba” Blair died after 181 days in Chesterfield County jail while he waited for court-ordered mental-health treatment. A pathologist listed profound dehydration from water deprivation. SLED now investigates a homicide.
Gary “Bubba” Blair did not die quietly inside the Chesterfield County Detention Center. He wrote to a judge that Black jail director Troy Ellerbe and former Sheriff James Dixon had created an anti-White culture inside the jail.
“The staff is very nasty to white inmates thanks to Troy and James Dixon.” —Gary “Bubba” Blair, letter to Judge Gibbons
Blair was jailed on an officer-impersonation charge, a misdemeanor carrying at most a $500 fine or one year behind bars under South Carolina law.
The arrest warrant says he wore a sheriff-marked golf shirt, security badge, handcuffs, pepper spray, and tactical clothing during an argument at his sister’s home. Blair later told the judge the shirt came from Sam Parker’s 2011 sheriff’s campaign. His family said a medication change had triggered a mental-health crisis. Daniel Concannon reports the county set Blair’s bond at $35,000.
A court found Blair incompetent to stand trial and ordered competency-restoration treatment. It never came. Instead, he spent 181 days in jail. On July 24, jailers found him dead.
The autopsy called it homicide: “profound dehydration…due to deprivation of water.” It recorded profound weight loss, pneumonia, a heel pressure ulcer, and evidence that Blair drank toilet water. Inmates told Queen City News that jail staff cut water to his cell and they passed him water in a chip bag.
Ellerbe ran the detention center. Sheriff Cambo Streater fired him five days after Blair’s death but has not explained the decision. SLED’s homicide investigation remains open.
