South-Carolina
SC sentences 2 in ‘disgusting, horrific’ case
Assistant Deputy Attorney General David Hernandez on contraband csc case
Contraband phones aided Criminal Sexual Conduct says State Attorney General office in Greenville court Dec 22 2025
A Simpsonville woman was sentenced to four decades in prison for what prosecutors called one of the most evil things a mother could do to a child.
Circuit Court Judge Patrick Fant III sentenced 26-year-old Abbygale El-Dier to 40 years.
Her boyfriend, Jacob Lance, 29, who was already serving a 30-year term for a 2015 Anderson County manslaughter case, was sentenced to 40 additional years for accessory to criminal sexual misconduct with a minor.
The case came to light after South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson launched a crackdown on contraband in state prisons. Jail staff discovered that El-Dier had sent Lance dozens of videos and photos showing her sexually abusing her three-year-old daughter. The three-year-old isn’t related to Lance.
Cortney Rea, assistant solicitor with the 13th Circuit, called it the worst case she has ever prosecuted, citing the severe trauma suffered by the toddler.
“I have tried to put this into words, but how vile these acts are, words fall short. Inhuman, disgusting, horrific, but what the defendant really did to her child is just evil,” Rea said. “Everyone who has touched this case has been negatively affected by their perversion. What this defendant (El-Dier) did to this child is incomprehensible.”
El-Dier also received a five-year prison sentence for first-degree sexual exploitation. Lance was also sentenced to three years for sexual exploitation of a minor. The three-year sentence will run concurrently with his previous sentence.
According to prosecutors, El-Dier and Lance messaged each other from August 2022 to August 2023, where the two talked about abusing the child. The pair also spoke about the idea of Lance abusing the child, along with drugging them and other children. Law enforcement became aware of the pair’s conversations after someone tipped the Simpsonville Police Department about the messages.
After the tip, law enforcement arrested El-Dier, and agents from the Attorney General’s Office obtained Lance’s phone.
El-Dier pled guilty in July, and Lance pled guilty in November.
‘Suffered abuse’
In March 2018, both Jacob and his brother, Ernest Lance, were found guilty of beating Todd Cantlay to death before setting his Pendleton home on fire. Jacob Lance is serving his 30-year prison sentence at the Lee County Correctional Facility in Bishopville.
El-Dier’s attorney, Greenville-based Will Hellams, and her family accused Lance of manipulating and psychologically abusing her.
“We will always regret not catching on to how truly severe the situation was every day for the rest of our lives. We are so disappointed that our granddaughter will have to grow up knowing about these horrific events. The therapy she will have to go through will never be enough,” the victim’s advocate said in the hearing.
Lance told Judge Fant a different story during the hearing, in which he claimed El-Dier initiated the dialogue about the abuse and that he felt blackmailed to continue the conversations. He said if he didn’t, she would cut off communication and potentially alert the Department of Corrections about his contraband cellphones.
“I felt forced to go along with it because I didn’t want her calling a search team and turning it all around on me to make it seem like I’m some creep,” Lance said.
Contraband crackdown by AG’s Office
This case, along with several others, is part of an initiative by the Attorney General’s Office to punish the possession of contraband cellphones.
The State Grand Jury investigated and indicted each case in the initiative.
El-Dier’s family said they reported Lance to the South Carolina Department of Corrections multiple times, but he would have several phones at a time and would switch between them to gain access to El-Dier.
David Fernandez, assistant deputy for the Attorney General’s Office, said the detailed conversations between El-Dier and Lance about the daughter’s abuse were only the tip of the iceberg in comparison to the things El-Dier did to her own daughter.
“What has been provided today, your honor, is simply a snippet of the luminous conversation between the two. These were no fantasies; these were actions that were acted out in real time by El-Dier for the benefit of Jacob Lance,” Assistant Deputy Attorney General David Fernandez said during the hearing.
NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCIV) — On the verge of clinching a ticket to the Kelly Cup Playoffs, the South Carolina Stingrays faced off against the Allen Americans Saturday at the North Charleston Coliseum, cheered on by 5,430 fans.
For the second straight night the Rays scored early, with forward Anthony Rinaldi sending home a goal giving the Stingrays a 1-0 lead only 3:14 into the period.
Over ten minutes later the Stingrays doubled their advantage thanks to Kyler Kupka who knocked home a center goal fed by Dean Loukus on the power play.
South Carolina was ahead 2-0 with 4 minutes left in the first, however Allen Americans player Danny Katic scored a quick goal making it 2-1 at the end of the first. Allen seemed to gain momentum after that goal with Harrison Blaisdell tying the game early in the second with a shorthanded goal.
Now with the two-goal lead buffer gone the Rays were searching for a break in Allen’s defenses.
READ MORE | Stingrays sign forward Casey McDonald after four-year college career at LIU
Yet again one of the newest team acquisitions delivered as Rays player Rinaldi tucked home an odd-man chance just over five minutes into the second period pushing South Carolina back in front, 3-2.
The Allen American’s goalie Marco Costantini was peppered with shots from the rays throughout the second, as they worked to regain a larger edge. Costantini blocked 17 shots on goal in the second period and both teams moved to the third maintaining a 3-2 score.
Over seven minutes into the third period Kupka punched home his second goal of the night, building South Carolina’s lead back to 4-2. The Americans responded quickly however, when forward Michael Gildon made a score with 8:19 left in regulation.
Heading into the final minutes of the game with only a one-goal cushion, the Stingrays earned a much needed insurance goal at the hands of Casey McDonald.
Though the Americans pulled their goalie to bring out an extra player with 2:32 left, they ended up scoring only one goal, unable to totally cover the two goal lead that the Stingrays had continually built up.
With this victory, the Stingrays have qualified for the Kelly Cup Playoffs for the 30th time in 33 seasons. South Carolina has points in 15 of its last 16 games, and have 24 wins at home this season, second most in the ECHL.
The Stingrays will return to the North Charleston Coliseum on March 22nd, against the Allen Americans for Pucks and Paws Day presented by Washes and Wags Pet Grooming at 3:05 p.m.
South-Carolina
The fault(s) in our state: The geological forces that cause SC’s earthquakes, explained
COLUMBIA — You might have missed it, but the Midlands was hit by yet another earthquake this week.
The Magnitude 2.1 earthquake struck just about two miles west of Irmo on March 19, according to a preliminary report by the U.S. Geological Survey. It was a “blink and you’ll miss it” temblor, as earthquakes of that size typically just spur minor disruptions — like causing suspended objects to swing — according to the USGS.
Over the past several years, the Midlands has experienced a higher-than-normal (at least from a human perspective) level of seismic activity, The Post and Courier has previously reported.
The March 19 quake is just one of the many earthquakes the Palmetto State experiences every year.
South Carolina is bisected by a number of fault lines that cause those temblors. Those formations are the lingering scars of seismic activities that slammed continents together, raised the Appalachians from the Earth and created the Atlantic Ocean.
And those wounds are far from healed.
“Once you form a fault, it never truly disappears,” said Steven Jaume, a professor of geology and seismology at the College of Charleston.
“ If you break anything, you can glue it back together,” Jaume explained. “But unless you happen to have glue that’s stronger than the original material, it’s gonna break in the same place that broke the first time.”
An earthquake hit near Lake Murray on March 19, 2026, making it the sixth recorded earthquake in the area in less than two months.
The coastal plain has historically been the most earthquake-active part of the state, according to the S.C. Department of Natural Resources. Much of that activity — including the 1886 earthquake, one of the deadliest natural disasters to strike South Carolina — has been clustered around the Summerville area.
The faults that run under the coast and Midlands are “inferred” faults. That means they require special equipment and techniques to detect, Jaume said, as the coastal plain’s sediments cover up most of the visual surface indicators.
“We usually can’t see them directly,” he explained.
“ In 1886, we don’t know exactly what moved because it did not break the Earth’s surface,” he added. “And if it doesn’t break the Earth’s surface, you can’t put your finger directly on it.”
Age is another major difference between coastal faults and their Upstate cousins, Jaume said. Many of the Upstate faults were formed when North America and Africa collided hundreds of millions of years ago, forcing the Appalachians skyward. As the two continents drifted apart, opening the Atlantic Ocean, newer fault lines began to form.
“We think the (younger faults) are being reactivated now underneath the Charleston area,” Jaume said.
The most recent temblor to strike the coastal area was a Magnitude 2 which occurred a few dozen miles offshore of McClellanville on March 13. It was the first offshore quake to hit the state in at least 20 years, according to a DNR database.
As to the Midlands swarm? It’s actually two distinct clusters — one centered in the Elgin area, and the other by Lake Murray. Jaume said both the Elgin and Lake Murray clusters appear to be the reactivation of a fault line. The March 19 quake was part of the Lake Murray cluster.
He added that it is possible for man-made reservoirs to spur earthquake activity, but that doesn’t appear to be the case with Lake Murray, which was constructed in the late 1920s. But that trend, called “Reservoir-induced Seismicity” has been documented at Lake Monticello, which was built for the VC Summer Nuclear Power Station.
“ When they put that one in, they had thousands of micro-earthquakes following the filling of that lake,” Jaume said. “And they periodically have swarms. There was one in fall of ‘21 and fall of ‘23.”
South Carolina’s fault lines fall into three categories. Strike-slip faults occur when plates move horizontally to one another. A thrust fault occurs when the plate above the fault slides up and over another. A standard fault causes the plate above the fault to slide lower than the opposing one.
COLUMBIA — Tessa Johnson giggled before she said, “This is going to sound very bad.
“But I’ve been trying to rebound this season, it just sometimes doesn’t work out for me and today it did.”
Johnson had first career double-double for South Carolina women’s basketball and found herself fielding questions about rebounding, a uncommon topic for the shooting guard.
She scored 14 points with her career-high 10 rebounds in the 103-34 victory over No. 16 seed Southern in the March Madness first-round game on March 21 in Colonial Life Arena.
It wasn’t that the junior guard woke up on the morning of her third Women’s NCAA Tournament opener and decided to start rebounding. But with a recent shooting slump, she was intentional about helping her team in other ways.
“I just wanted to do more than just scoring out there,” Johnson said. “I feel like I can do a little bit more out there and really wanted to focus on rebounding this game.”
Coach Dawn Staley’s top-seeded Gamecocks (32-3) will now play either No. 8 Clemson or No. 9 Southern Cal after Johnson’s contributions helped push them to the second round.
Johnson’s height at 6-feet does occasionally give her an advantage against some guards but given how frequently South Carolina runs in transition, it’s normally Johnson sprinting down the court instead of crashing the boards.
She leads the SEC in 3-point shooting at 44.1%, which is 10th in the nation.
Her signature spot-up shooting was highlighted on a grander scale in the 79-72 win over LSU on Feb. 14, when she started 4-of-5 in the first half, forcing Tigers coach Kim Mulkey to scream “Who can guard Tessa” at her team.
Johnson then went 10-of-34 across the next six games (29%).
To start the game against the Jaguars (20-14) it looked like Johnson hadn’t quite shaken off the slump, starting 0-of-2 from the 3-point line. She went to the locker room in the first quarter and returned three minutes later after taping two of her fingers.
She hit two 3-pointers in the third quarter and two in the fourth.
“Good I mean, there was like a cover on the hoop for everyone in the first half,” said Johnson when asked how breaking out of the 3-point slump felt. “The second half we picked it up defensively and I think that just helped us offensively.”
By halftime she was only three shy of tying her career-high in rebounds with seven, but grabbed four in the third quarter
“I wasn’t thinking about a double-double until I realized I was at eight points, eight rebounds but I really was just looking at my rebounding,” said Johnson, who is averaging a career-high 3.3. “I don’t rebound very well but now I’m getting up there.”
Lulu Kesin covers South Carolina athletics for The Greenville News and the USA TODAY Network. Email her at LKesin@usatodayco.com. Follow her on X@Lulukesin and Bluesky@bylulukesin.bsky.social
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