Ex-Charlotte leader arrested for threatening to blow up a South Carolina dam
Tim Newman, a former Charlotte business leader, was being held in a South Carolina jail Thursday morning on a felony charge of threatening to destroy a Berkeley County dam.
It was Newman’s third arrest in two months and at least his fifth since 2018.
Newman was charged with threatening to destroy the Pinopolis Dam, an earthen and concrete structure owned by Santee Cooper, a state-owned power and water utility, according to utility spokeswoman Molly Gore. The dam is near Lake Moultrie.
Newman is being held on $45,000 bond, a jail spokeswoman told the Observer.
Newman was chief executive of the Charlotte Regional Visitors Authority from 2004 to 2011. A former general manager of the Charlotte Knights, he was instrumental in pushing for NASCAR to put its Hall of Fame in Charlotte.
He was demoted in 2011 after facing mounting criticism of his management, including projections of attendance at the hall of fame. He’d also been under fire for giving an employee a controversial $100,000 bonus.
The Charlotte Ledger has reported that Newman was arrested in February and in March on charges involving probation violations and communicating threats.
On March 30, the Ledger reported that Newman was being held in a Columbia jail with no bond on charges of harassment. Columbia jail records show he was there on charges of second-degree harassment.
In 2018 the Observer reported that he was arrested and charged with stalking a woman and violating a domestic violence protective order, according to Mecklenburg County records.
A week before, he’d been arrested after climbing under a Charlotte-Mecklenburg police car and calling 911 to say he had been hit by the car.
In 2013, he was charged with DWI, the second such charge in a year. Both were dismissed.
Newman now lives in Rock Hill. According to LinkedIn, he’s executive director of Adult Spectrum Transitions, an organization that provides “marketplace job training and placement to adults on the autism spectrum and once employed they are offered residential and transportation options.”
This story was originally published April 9, 2020 at 12:33 PM.
