Beaufort County paper carrier assaulted. ‘All we were doing was delivering a newspaper’

Wanda Boatright’s early-morning paper route takes her 230 miles through northern Beaufort County — winding through Seabrook, Sheldon, Port Royal and Brays Island — but the pitch-black commute never scared her until Sunday morning, she says.

Shortly after 1:30 a.m., Boatright and her husband were delivering the Beaufort Gazette and Wall Street Journal to porches in Port Royal’s Shadow Moss neighborhood. As he turned the car around on Kiawah Drive, they spotted a “big man” blocking the roadway.

“I figured he was wanting to talk to me, kind of introduce himself,” Boatright told The Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette. “But that’s not the way he went.”

The man began yelling at the couple, saying they had “no business” in the neighborhood as he edged toward the car’s open window. When Boatright’s husband told him to step back, the man reached into the car, punching him in the face and trying to pull him from the vehicle, according to Capt. John Griffith of the Port Royal Police Department.

Police arrested the man soon after, identifying him as 46-year-old Port Royal resident Percival Davis. He was charged with third-degree assault and battery and released Sunday morning on a personal recognizance bond.

The early-morning attack left Boatright’s husband with severe facial injuries, a stiff neck and a number of loose teeth, she said.

“I used to (deliver to) downtown Beaufort, St. Helena and Lady’s Island,” Boatright said of her previous routes. “So people know me. I’m very well known here. And for these people to just sit here and assault my husband like that — that’s just not fair. All we were doing was delivering a newspaper.”

A Beaufort County judge issued a restraining order at Davis’ Sunday morning bond hearing, requiring the man to stay 1000 feet away from Boatright and her husband at all times.

The couple faced a year and a half of homelessness after being evicted from their Port Royal apartment in late 2021, overwhelmed by chemotherapy bills for Boatright’s autoimmune disease. They’re now back in an apartment, she says, but the Sunday attack has destroyed her sense of safety in the one job that kept her family financially afloat.

“I’m scared to even deliver papers in this neighborhood,” Boatright said.

But the attack won’t stop her from getting papers onto porches across Beaufort County, she says — especially for the residents that count on her daily delivery.

“Elderly people love their papers,” Boatright said. “It’s something that they’ve read their entire lives. And it means something to them, for us to go down their driveways or down their roads — that little extra effort to have that paper on their porch, where they’re able to get it.”