AUGUST 14–20, 2025
WWW.YOURISLANDNEWS.COM
COVERING BEAUFORT COUNTY
City makes huge FOIA gaffe Beaufort couple gets 9,000 pages of unredacted emails; much of it shouldn’t have been released By Mike McCombs The Island News In the process of fulfilling a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by a citizen on July 29, the City of Beaufort mistakenly released information it was not required to release and that it should not have produced, potentially compromising the personal information and privacy of numerous individuals and causing the City to re-evaluate how it handles requests for information. When Autumn Hollis submitted a FOIA request to the City of Beaufort in May, she and her hus-
band, Kiel, were hoping to learn more about how the Beaufort Police Department handled the case of their daughter Emily and others like it. The Hollis family contends their then12-year-old daughter was a victim of human trafficking in February, while the Beaufort Police maintained initially that she was a runaway and now says any trafficking took place outside its jurisdiction. When the Hollis family re-
ceived the documents fulfilling their request from the City, they were stunned. In more than 9,000 pages of emails, not including attachments, of which there are many, almost nothing is redacted. In addition to hundreds of pages of documents pertaining specifically to the Hollis case — surprisingly including their daughter’s full forensic examination, recorded as part of the sexual assault investigation and usually released
only after a court order — there are thousands that are totally unrelated. And it’s what’s in those documents that may be more concerning. • There are the Social Security numbers and addresses of at least 55 individuals across hundreds of documents. • There is another minor’s forensic interview, released without the family’s knowledge. • There are records that include private medical and DSS-protected information. • There are emails involving
SEE GAFFE PAGE A4
Beaufort mother wants answers
BACK TO SCHOOL
Robert Smalls Leadership Academy students wait for the doors to open on the first day of school Wednesday, Aug. 7, 2025. Amber Hewitt/The Island News
HELP of Beaufort gets a new home
By Delayna Earley The Island News After nearly three years of construction, HELP of Beaufort finally has a permanent home. The doors to their new facility will open on Monday, Aug. 18, when they officially open for business in the building. Executive Director Lori Opozda said in an interview with The Island News on Monday evening that they would be having a private ribbon cutting on Friday at the building to say thank you to all of the volunteers and donors who helped to make the organization’s dream building a reality. The building was a community partnership build, meaning that
the employment/personnel details for members of the Beaufort Police Department. • There are toxicology reports for numerous individuals. • There are attachments showing the Beaufort Police Department has hidden or deleted more than 800 comments on a Facebook page. • There are numerous emails which contain the reset login/password for Spillman for more than one officer with the
labor and fiances that contributed building the structure were donated from members of the community. “It’s taken so long because we were looking to do a community build with everybody,” Opozda said. “You know, we look for plumbers, electricians, sheet rock people, painters, wood suppliers, roof suppliers, you know, things like that that you know people would like to work with us to either donate materials or donate time or give us a discount.” The 4,500-square-foot structure features a large warehouse
HELP of Beaufort's Director, Lori Opozda, prepares last minute details on Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2025 at HELP’s new location at 1600 Ribaut Road in Port Royal ahead of the Ribbon Cutting scheduled for Friday, Aug. 15. SEE HOME PAGE A5 Amber Hewitt/The Island News
By Delayna Earley The Island News The mother of a 7-year-old non-verbal autistic student at Shanklin Elementary School is left with more questions than answers after her daughter required a trip to the hospital due to an injury sustained on the first day of the school year. On Wednesday, Aug. 6, Lenisha Manigo said that she received a phone call from the nurse at the school that her daughter, Jayla Frazier, attends asking her to come pick up her up from school because she had been injured. Manigo said that she did not have any clue until she arrived at the school how badly injured her daughter was. She said that she was told by the teacher and assistants in her daughter’s special education classroom that Jayla had injured herself by slamming her finger in a door. “I walked into the office, and she was sitting there with nothing on her finger, blood on the floor and all over her clothes,” Manigo said. Manigo said she immediately took her daughter from the school to the hospital where they kept her for eight hours before ultimately putting her daughter under anesthesia to repair the damage done to her middle finger on her right hand. What would have been a bad situation for anyone was even more confusing and traumatic for an autistic, non-verbal child, according to Manigo. Wanting answers about how this had happened, Manigo returned to the school the following day to allegedly try and meet with the school’s principal and student resource officer to find out how
SEE ANSWERS PAGE A3
NEWS
SPORTS
EDUCATION
INSIDE
Port Royal Police called to Piggly Wiggly.
SCISA teams kick off Friday, ending the long wait to return to the gridiron.
Robert Smalls International Academy principal named Principal of the Year.
PAGE A4
PAGE A7
PAGE A11
Lowcountry Life A2 News A2–6 Arts A6 Sports A7 Legals A8–9 Education A10–11
Health A12 Voices A14–15 Military A16–17 Directory A18 Classifieds A19 Games A19