Here is the story from Berkeley County....confirmed the story of cash and gas given to him by the church.
------------------------------------
Berkeley County deputies encountered Thomas Lawton Evans under suspicious circumstances two days before investigators said he abducted 4-year-old HT from Charleston and brutally beat her mother, a report released Wednesday showed.
The authorities had no reason to arrest him at the time, they said.
Before 8 a.m. Feb. 11, residents on Mendel Rivers Road, south of St. Stephen, reported a black Honda Civic parked on the rural roadside. Some neighbors told investigators a man had been walking through yards and asking for gas.
Deputies from the Berkeley County Sheriff's Office came across Evans along Harristown Road with a gas can in his hand. He said a church had given him the gas and some cash —*a story that the deputy later confirmed, the incident report stated.
The car wasn't his, the document added. It was registered to a woman from Boiling Springs, an area of Spartanburg County in Upstate South Carolina. Evans had been living nearby after his prison release less than two weeks earlier.
The deputy asked local dispatchers to relay a request for Upstate authorities to check on the woman "to see if she knew where her vehicle was located," the report stated. Lt. Kevin Bobo of the Spartanbug County Sheriff's Office said Wednesday that a deputy went to the woman's address at 8:45 a.m. that day "but we didn't locate anyone."
Though his driver's license was suspended, Evans had not been seen driving the car and was permitted to leave.
"He stated that he would have his brother come and pick up the car," the local deputy wrote in the report. "Upon confirming he was clear (of arrest warrants) and that no items were stolen, he was allowed to go."
Sheriff's Chief Deputy Mike Cochran said deputies wouldn't normally have an obligation to wait for a licensed driver to show up and drive off with a vehicle like the one Evans had. With a large county to patrol, the deputies typically move on, which also spares the driver a large towing bill.
"As a general rule, you have to see him doing the driving to make an arrest," Cochran said. "This wouldn't necessarily warrant an arrest."
https://www.postandcourier.com/news...cle_d1991480-1713-11e8-b80e-3fe20fd8edab.html
Sent from my P00I using Tapatalk