Hizzoner was tooling down the road in a lawn mower, with an open can of Miller Lite, according to police dashcam video.
The mayor of a small South Carolina town was stopped by police as he puttered down a dark highway in a lawn mower, drinking a can of beer, dashcam video appears to show.
John Gardner of Aynor, population 763, was riding a mower on a two-lane road when officers from the Horry County Police Department turned on their flashing lights, the footage shows.
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“He’s not stopping,” a female officer says, laughing. He later pulls to a stop after one of the cops screams at him.
“You know who I am?” the mayor asks.
"I know you," an officer replies.
Gardner, who also is the chief financial officer for Horry County Schools, apologized.
“You have an open container of Miller Lite. You were drinking going down the road,” an officer says.
“You ain’t supposed to have that," the other cop is heard saying. "Am I right or am I wrong?"
Gardner was not charged. The video was recently released by the police department at the request of a local news agency.
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Horry County police spokeswoman Krystal Dotson said that no police report was available because the incident was just a contact/traffic stop, and no report was generated. The case was not turned over to the Aynor Police Department, she said, according to WMBF-TV.
In an interview last week with a local paper, Gardner said the beer was not open. “It was unopened to the best of my knowledge,” he said.
An unidentified person arrived to drive away the mower, the video shows. It was not clear how the mayor got home.
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