Fallen HCPD officer remembered for his work with Beautify Carolina Forest

HORRY COUNTY, S.C. (WMBF) - Horry County police officer Melton Gore, known by many as Fox, frequently helped the group Beautify Carolina Forest as part of his duties as an officer.

Beautify Carolina Forest is a group of volunteers that maintains the landscaping around the Carolina Forest area. A lot of their work requires them to work in the medians of Carolina Forest Boulevard, which can be dangerous as cars come close to them.

Gore was the organization’s point of contact from the Horry County Police Department. Group members would frequently ask if he could come to the medians they work on to park his police truck in the road and place cones down in order to keep cars a safe distance away from the volunteers.

Betsy Fay, president of Beautify Carolina Forest, says he was always a positive person.

“He just had a really funny sense of humor,” Fay said. “He was always smiling. When you went to thank him, he said he appreciated our work, so he was very nice to us as a group and very protective of us so that was good.”

Fay said Gore loved serving in the environmental services division of HCPD because he cared about the beauty of the area.

“We were constantly in contact with him when we had littering issues,” Fay said. “Last year, we had a guy who dumped a whole part of a half of a house on Postal Way and just drove away. And so we called him, and they got right on it. It got removed within a couple of days.”

Fay said Gore would even go out of his way to track people down who littered in order to hold them accountable with fines. He was also active in the Covington Lake neighborhood’s National Night Out.

“He’s going to be a loss,” Fay said. “He’s going to be a hard person to replace, because he really did care about the community.”

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