NEW HANOVER COUNTY – A judge has ordered top brass in local law enforcement and the district attorney’s office to reach a compromise in a lawsuit filed by a former city employee who’s claiming wrongful termination and retaliation.
On April 18, New Hanover County Superior Court Judge Kent Harrell ordered Bethany Pridgen and five defendants, consisting of local government, law enforcement and judicial heads, to begin conciliation proceedings no later than Aug. 31. The case, known as MacGillivray v. Wilmington, centers around allegations from Bethany MacGillivray, neé Pridgen.
Pridgen, who was the director of the Wilmington Police Department Crime Lab, initially filed a lawsuit in May 2022 against New Hanover County Sheriff Ed McMahon, alleging retaliation for testimony she gave in an Internal Affairs investigation. The former director claimed a chemist was not truthful in more than 100 drug cases, many of which had already been tried and convicted.
Originally, Pridgen was hired by WPD in 2008 to build the crime lab into a more efficient agency for local prosecutors. The sheriff’s office took over the lab from the WPD in 2019 and hired two of Pridgen’s subordinates but not her.
She added more defendants onto the lawsuit in August 2022, accusing current Wilmington Police Chief Donnie Williams and assistant chief David Oyler of harboring a “long-simmering gender-based malice” against her, which fostered a “negative attitude toward women” within the department.
New Hanover County District Attorney Ben David was also listed as a co-defendant in the lawsuit. Pridgen claims he tried to have her disqualified as a forensic expert in cases she was involved in.
In total, Pridgen’s lawsuit alleges several counts:
- Violation of the state’s whistleblower act against Sheriff McMahon by retaliation
- Violation of the state’s whistleblower act against the City of Wilmington, Wilmington Police Department Chief Donny Williams, David Oyler and District Attorney Ben David by retaliation
- Wrongful termination by City of Wilmington
- Wrongful discharge by the Wilmington Police Department
- Violation of the equal opportunity policies by Sheriff McMahon
- Tortious interference against David and tortious interference against Williams and Oyler
The defendants filed partial motions of dismissal Jan. 23 to be heard in NHC Superior Court. As a result, the whistleblower count was dismissed entirely by Harrell.
However, on Feb. 8, NHC Superior Court Judge Allen Cobb granted David’s motion to dismiss based on the grounds of sovereign immunity.
Since David is an elected county prosecutor, he is protected against civil liability as long as he is in office. Pridgen appealed the ruling to the State Court of Appeals on March 7, but agreed to a voluntary dismissal on June 15, with the right to resubmit at the end of all proceedings.
A toxic work environment leads to retaliation
David was once one of Pridgen’s avid supporters, according to the lawsuit. That all changed after she gave damning testimony that threatened David’s conviction rate.
Pridgen testified under oath with concerns to the conduct of William Peltzer, a chemist who was later fired from the WPD on Jan. 25, 2019. An internal affairs investigation found he had violated four articles stemming from drugs missing from WPD.
Those articles included property and evidence control, member obligations, on-duty performance and standard of conduct. Peltzer had been with the agency since August 2015.
According to Pridgen, 101 cases were impacted by Peltzer’s conduct, and both the WPD and the New Hanover District Attorney’s Office knew about the missing street heroin. Port City Daily reached out to WPD and the sheriff’s office, including their lawyers, Katie Hartzog and Ryan Bostic, about how much heroin was missing but no one responded by press.
In her lawsuit, Pridgen said she was “castigated” by the WPD and the district attorney’s office, as well as the U.S. Attorney General’s Office, saying she jeopardized drug convictions with her testimony, no matter how truthful it might have been. She said several weeks after testifying, she was called into a meeting with her supervisors, including then-WPD Chief Ralph Evangelous, with whom Pridgen had issue working for.
She said the WPD, under Evangelous, created a toxic environment for women. Evangelous told her and other female colleagues, Pridgen claimed, to change their behavior around men and “things would be easier.” Pridgen also said Evangelous didn’t like to demote or fire male employees because they had “families to support.”
In the lawsuit she also took umbrage with her salary, which she said was $30,000 less than her male captain counterparts — the most comparable titles to her job and who make $101,000 and $104,000 per year.
Pridgen alleges Evangelous proposed prosecutors dismiss all of the cases Peltzer had even the slightest hand in touching. Prosecutors flatly rejected that idea, according to Pridgen.
Internal Affairs began a new investigation of the missing heroin soon after that, but this time, according to the lawsuit, Pridgen was never called in to testify again and would eventually lose her position as lab director.
When the sheriff’s office officially took over operation of the crime lab in April 2019, Pridgen’s suit states McMahon promised “she and her direct reports would continue in their jobs with the transfer, but they had to apply under official policy.” Despite having successfully run the crime lab for over a decade, Pridgen’s two subordinates were both hired, while she was not.
Pridgen then asked David why she was left out, and according to the suit, the DA told her to “leave Wilmington, and find work elsewhere.”
Today, Pridgen gives independent testimony, as one of the foremost forensics experts in the state, for the DEVAUS Group, LLC. However, David has moved to have her disqualified in his cases, despite her qualifications, which later led to her adding him to the suit.
Pridgen said in her suit it was whistleblower retaliation for her testimony against Peltzer. She also alleges the reorganization of the lab was for one purpose: to get rid of her.
According to WPD, the lab was transferred to the NHCSO because of a lack of funding and staffing. Williams and Oyler were added to the suit because they were involved in the transfer of the crime lab from WPD to NHCSO.
Pridgen countered that in 2019, the city had approved a five-year $166,000 lease on equipment for the forensic labs, a combined gas chromatograph and mass spectrometer. She also said she had met with then-deputy chief Alex Sotelo to discuss “laboratory expansion plans under a multi-year strategic plan.”
READ MORE: Wilmington stuck with $166,000 lease for unused crime lab equipment
PCD reached out to all the lawyers in the case — Hartzog, Bostic, Attorney General Josh Stein representing the district attorney, and Luke Largess for Pridgen — for comment. The AG’s office and Largess both responded they could not answer questions about an ongoing case.
[The article has been updated to reflect Pridgen is MacGillivray’s maiden name.]
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