CONWAY, S.C. (WBTW) – Offensive messages plastered all over a truck in Conway has a lot of people upset. If you drive down 701, you’ll pass an almost empty lot. But through the weeds you can’t help but notice offensive messages that are on the truck.
“It’s not something that you would want to have in your neighborhood.”
Scott Johnson lives close to where the truck is parked. The messages on the truck call a woman the “b” word. It also calls her a criminal and has other derogatory messages.
Johnson’s biggest concern is that the truck is close to Homewood Elementary.
“We try to teach our children, and the schools are trying to teach them about being upright citizens being responsible and yet we see irresponsibility out all around them. If we are going to teach responsibility, we need to be responsible as good mentors.”
We asked Horry County school board chairman Joe Defeo what the school board could do about this.
“From an Horry County Schools standpoint, we’re a school board, we have a lot of jurisdiction but it all remains in the schools and that’s just totally out of our….it would end up being civil action and we’re not going to get involved in any civil action.”
Horry County spokeswoman Lisa Bourcier says the county can’t do anything about the truck because it’s on private property.
She said in a statement, “this issue falls under the federal freedom of speech law, because although it’s close, it’s not obscene or pornographic. Unfortunately our hands are tied.”
Johnson said that answer isn’t good enough.
“There’s a certain point that there’s limits on how your freedom is because if you start to go and offend other people, that’s where you need to stop. This is offensive.”
The truck has been around for years. Now that it’s near a school, it’s raised a lot of concern.
