A state Circuit Court judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed in the wake of a traffic stop arrest in Rock Hill in 2021.
In a ruling in Greenville this week, Circuit Court Judge G.D. Morgan ruled that police had reasonable cause to stop Ricky Price at a gas station minimart that summer. Morgan backed up his decision by citing that officers found drugs and firearms in Price’s car—charges for which he served four months before 16th Circuit Court prosecutors dropped the charges.
The arrests of Ricky Price and his brother, Travis, that July were captured in viral video that shows Travis Price coming to retrieve some items from his brother’s car and getting taken to the ground and arrested by officers. That action triggered Ricky Price to fight the officers, who took him to the ground as well.
Officers claimed that Travis Price had interfered with officers and had assaulted them. Those charges were later dismissed. Travis Price sued and was awarded $500,000 in the matter in 2023.
Video of the arrests triggered protests – some of which turned violent – over three days in Rock Hill that summer. The Prices are Black and most of the officers at the scene of the incident were not; which led to high racial tensions a year following the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.
Following the protests, one Rock Hill officer, Chris Moreno, was fired from the city Police Department. He was acquitted of charges of third-degree assault and battery in a York County criminal trial soon after. Moreno then ran for a seat representing Rock Hill on the York County Council, but lost to incumbent Bump Roddy.
In 2024, Ricky Price filed a federal lawsuit claiming his civil rights were violated and that his and his brother’s arrests were racially motivated.
Morgan’s ruling that the evidence presented him “supports probable cause for the arrest” of Price ends any further state action in Price’s case. But U.S. District Court Judge Mary Geiger Lewis will decide whether Price’s federal civil rights were violated and whether the case should move forward in federal court.