Ex-GOP Leader Is Charged With a Sad, Strange Crime

Todd Kincannon, 37, is hospitalized after allegedly killing his mother's dog
By Neal Colgrass,  Newser Staff
Posted Aug 3, 2018 4:40 PM CDT
Ex-GOP Leader Kills Mom's Dog and Says He's Christ: Cops
Todd Kincannon, 37.   (Lexington County Sheriff’s Office)

The former head of South Carolina's Republican Party has continued his downward spiral by allegedly butchering his mother's dog and saying God told him to do it, the State reports. Police say Todd Kincannon, 37, choked and stabbed his mother's 10-year-old cattle/beagle mix at his parents' Greenville County home on July 26, then walked outside in his underwear with dog hair and blood all over him. "I'm the second coming of Christ and I got a command from God to do it," he reportedly told one officer. Another quoted Kincannon as saying "that every 1,000 years there needs to be a sacrifice and blood must be spilt." Showing punctures and lacerations on his wrist and arm—possibly from the dog—he was said to have added, "I have a sign. I'm about to get crucified in the media."

If so, it wouldn't be the first time. Kincannon drew media attention in recent years for incendiary tweets about Nancy Pelosi, Trayvon Martin, and others and had his Twitter account suspended, the Washington Post reports. Among the tweets, he hurled vulgar epithets at Pelosi and said of Martin: "Will karma find me as quick as it did Trayvon? Oh wait I make [sic] it past my 18th birthday. So I guess the answer is no." Of the 2013 Super Bowl in New Orleans: "It hasn't been this dark in the Superdome since all those poors occupied it after Hurricane Katrina." He was charged with domestic violence in 2015, per the Charlotte Observer, and had his law license suspended later that year. Now he's been hospitalized for a mental-health evaluation and charged with ill treatment of animals. It's not clear whether he's been released. (More South Carolina stories.)

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