NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) – Less than two months before he was killed, Walter Lamer Scott turned 50 and wanted everyone around him to join in the celebration.
It was February, and Scott’s family had taken him to dinner at a Japanese steakhouse. As waiters and other staff gathered around to sing “Happy Birthday,” Scott jumped up on the table and started dancing.
“He had everybody in the restaurant laughing,” Rodney Scott said of his older brother. “That’s the kind of person he was.”
Walter Scott had much to celebrate: His job as a warehouse forklift operator, which had begun as temporary work over the holidays, was going so well his boss was determined to keep him as a permanent hire. And he had popped the question to his longtime girlfriend, who had agreed to become Scott’s third wife.
But Scott also had a problem that kept him looking over his shoulder: The father of four had fallen behind, again, on his child support payments. Failure to pay can mean jail time in South Carolina, and Scott had been locked up three times since 2008.