Physical Therapy near Goose Creek, SC

GOOSE CREEK, S.C. — Berkeley County officials cut the ribbon Friday on a new $4.3 million Goose Creek Magistrate and Public Safety Substation, a 12,102-square-foot facility designed to consolidate key county services under one roof.

Located at 653 Red Bank Road, the new building replaces three previously rented locations and now houses a modern magistrate’s office, a 24/7 EMS substation, and a Berkeley County Sheriff’s Office substation. County leaders say the consolidation will improve efficiency, cut response times and better serve the growing Goose Creek community.

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“This location, hosting multiple county services, will help us better serve the County while improving commute times for many,” said Berkeley County Supervisor Johnny Cribb.

The magistrate’s office features three fully equipped courtrooms and will be staffed by three judges, six clerks, constables, bailiffs, and security personnel. The former office on North Goose Creek Boulevard is now closed. Normal operations at the new site begin Monday, May 5.

The EMS substation will maintain round-the-clock coverage with a dedicated ambulance and two-person crews rotating across four shifts. The sheriff’s substation will be staffed during business hours, with deputies regularly stopping in for administrative work and evidence processing.

Designed by Herrington, LLC and constructed by Design Build Construction, the project also received major contributions from Berkeley County Roads & Bridges and IT teams.

County Chief Magistrate Rad Deaton praised the new facility as a long-overdue investment. “This new location, built with the future of the community and staff in mind, reflects the Court’s ongoing commitment to better serve the public.”

Sheriff Duane Lewis added, “This substation will allow our deputies to better respond to the needs of the community while strengthening our visibility and engagement in the area.”

GOOSE CREEK, S.C. (WCSC) - Every week, dozens of families flock to the Helping Hands of Goose Creek food pantry for everyday products that feed families struggling to get ahead.

For people like Loretta Mitchell, it’s a vital resource.

“I am so proud of what I got today,” Mitchell said. “I have some pita bread, some cinnamon rolls. I have fruits and vegetables. All the healthy food that we need.”

But recently, the pantry’s shelves have become emptier. Executive Director Nicole Franklin says budget cuts at the national level have hit them hard. They get much of their food from a United States Department of Agriculture program, but that program is being scaled back.

“In the first quarter of 2025, we saw a decrease of 14,000 pounds in food that we can distribute,” Franklin said. “So if you qualified for the USDA program, you were getting about 35 pounds of food, and now you’re getting about 20. Before, you could probably make three meals out of that. Now you can probably make two.”

On top of that, a large chunk of their funding to purchase food, about $11,000, is tied up in a grant that is being paused, despite it already being awarded.

If less food and less money aren’t enough, Franklin says they’re on track for a record year on the demand side of things, too.

“We went from 3,600 grocery carts that we distributed to 5,200 grocery carts in one year. So there was a huge influx – about 30%,” Franklin said. “We saw one family come in last month that had lost their job with Boeing because of the cuts. So, what we are seeing is that as cuts happen across the country, more people are coming because they have a need.”

Last month alone, Franklin says they fed nearly 500 families.

Pastor Yolanda White came to the pantry to pick up food for one of her parishioners. She says now is not the time to roll back government support for programs that help feed people.

“Those that make that decision are not in need,” White said. “They probably have never experienced what it means to be hungry or to try to determine how they can either pay their rent so they can remain in the apartment where the housing bill is astounding, or feed their family. Or what it’s like having to decide, do I pay my health care bill? Do I purchase the medication or do I purchase food?”

This weekend is the United States Postal Service’s Stamp Out Hunger food drive. Every second Saturday in May, people can leave items at their mailboxes, and mail carriers will pick them up. It generates thousands of pounds of food for local food pantries like Helping Hands.

Franklin says last year there wasn’t much advertising about the drive, and there hasn’t been any this year either. She says they saw a large drop in donations, going from 10,000 pounds to 14,000 pounds from the single food drive to just around 900 pounds last year. She is hoping this year will be different.

She says getting food on the shelves is a critical problem.

“I think that feeding people is the first way that we make a difference. If everyone’s bellies are full, kids are going to learn better at school. Employees are going to perform better,” Franklin said. “Everything across the board is benefited when bellies are full and families are fed.”

To participate in the food drive on Saturday, all you have to do is leave a box or can of nonperishable food at your mailbox, and the mail carriers will do the rest.

One of the Lowcountry’s many special, but virtually forgotten, historic places lies amid a small wood tucked between Chapel Creek and old S.C. Highway 52 in Goose Creek. Though today’s commuters zip past its historic highway marker driving to and from Charleston’s urban core, this spot was once a full day’s trek to the city’s colonial wharves.

It reminds us that simple geography plays a huge role in shaping history. Before humans ever lived here, small animals would cross what we call Chapel Creek at its shallowest point, which runs along the edge of this property. Predators followed, tracking smaller prey, and eventually indigenous people began hunting the larger animals.

As winter blossomed into spring and summer, natives migrated from inland hunting grounds to fish along the harbor’s shores, roughly traveling a footpath along what we know as S.C. 52 to Rivers Avenue, eventually merging into King Street and on down the peninsula.

When Europeans arrived in the 1670s, they traded with natives within the colony’s interior, making Goose Creek the Lowcountry’s formidable frontier of the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Ladened pack animals carried imported guns and manufactured items outbound, trudging back piled with deerskins and beaver pelts bound for European markets.

Traders usually walked, reserving the use of their pack animals for the heavy bundles of goods strapped across their backs. Mules and donkeys generally covered about 20 miles a day before they balked, ready to knock off for a graze and evening’s rest. Because of that, traders often stopped along the shallow freshwater creek the evening before crossing over to begin the last 22-mile leg of their journey to Charles Town the next morning. The site came to be known among traders and frontiersmen simply as “the camp.”

One of the traders who frequented this trail was an ambitious young man named George Chicken, who, along with his pack ponies, spent many nights at the campsite. With an entrepreneurial spirit and perhaps tired of the grueling and dangerous life of an Indian trader, Chicken dreamed of becoming a merchant and planter, successfully applying for a small grant of land along the creek on which to build a tavern to accommodate weary traders.

By that time, the colony’s lucrative trade with indigenous people had devolved into the even more lucrative trading of indigenous people. Though not the only colony to enslave natives, Charlestonians were among its most egregious practitioners, exporting men, women and children to the West Indies where they were forced into back-breaking labor on huge sugar plantations. While here, natives were familiar with the local landscape and near their families and tribesmen who could help them escape; they could not escape as easily from West Indian island plantations.

Historians have suggested that between Charles Town’s founding in 1670 through the Yemassee War of 1715, more than 50,000 enslaved natives were exported through the colony’s port, many more souls than were imported from West Africa during the same period.

For decades, tethered lines of captured natives languished at Chicken’s camp on the last night of their lives in their homeland, waiting for sunrise to begin the final leg of their dreaded journey to the waiting slave ships in Charles Town’s harbor.

While the sordid slave trading enterprise returned fortunes for Charles Town’s traders and merchants, it also forged more than a dozen of the region’s tribes into a confederacy that would nearly destroy the colony in 1715.

The story of Chicken’s camp is but one chapter of this site’s rich Lowcountry history. But we’ll have to save those tales for future columns.

GOOSE CREEK, S.C. (WCIV) — One person is dead after a house fire in Goose Creek early Tuesday morning, according to officials.

The Berkeley County Coroner's Office has identified the victim as Danial Skinner, 69, of Goose Creek.

Crews reportedly responded to the scene just after midnight, which involved a single family home off Kathryn Drive in Goose Creek.

Eight separate fire crews worked to extinguish the blaze including Goose Creek Rural, Pine Ridge, Hanahan, Caromi, Pimlico, Goose Creek City, Joint Base, Central Berkeley Fire & EMS.

“It was a significant fire when we arrived, almost half the house was involved in fire," said Chief Bob Maibach with Goose Creek Rural Fire Department.

THE LATEST: Berkeley County coroner identifies one dead in Goose Creek house fire

Chief Maibach said there's no reason to believe this was a suspicious fire or a case of arson, and that SLED is always called in to investigate when a fatality is reported.

A cause of fire was unknown Tuesday. Chief Maibach said his crews often find non-operating smoke alarms at the scene of house fires.

“These are situations that happen and every second counts, so having that alarm that functions and alerts you, even in in the middle of the night, is very important," he said. "Smoke detectors save lives."

The fire was officially reported under control just before 1:00 a.m. Tuesday.

Fire crews were called back to the scene around 7 a.m. to extinguish a small spot fire.

SLED, State Fire Marshals, the Berkeley County Coroner's Office and Berkeley County Sheriff's Office are investigating.

GOOSE CREEK, S.C. (WCSC) - Reality Church in Goose Creek and The Formation Project are getting human trafficking victims back on their feet with a new support home in Berkeley County.

The Eden House project aims to house six women at a time who have experienced human trafficking. The women will come through a nonprofit organization, The Formation Project, that focuses on providing services to victims and survivors.

The women will be monitored by and receive services through the nonprofit, including internet access to help them enter the workforce.

A property purchase by Reality Church Lead Pastor Ric Edgar is what sparked the idea. Edgar purchased 10 acres of land in the Ladson area that included a 1960s home in July 2024.

Edgar says the land was originally meant for a new church as well as demolishing the included home. The demolition was meant to have an open view for the new build, but plans changed.

The pastor says the home will be renovated to become the Eden House or “the place for new beginnings” for rescued women. Plans for the property still include adding a church building. Edgar says the support home will take priority for now as it is a decision supported by his church community.

“[The church family] knew like I knew that God gave purpose to the land,” Edgar says. “But they also knew, as I knew, this has to be first,” Edgar continues. “We will not build a church until this house is renovated and is up and running and Formation Project has these women here. This is first.”

A series of connections sparked Edgar’s decision. The lead pastor says he realized human trafficking “happens right in our backyard” by watching former National Football League quarterback and retired Major League Baseball player Tim Tebow’s ministry programming. Edgar says he was also moved to take action by trafficking statistics from across the Lowcountry and especially Berkeley County.

An annual report by the state Attorney General shows the state had nearly 400 human trafficking victims statewide in 2024. The report shows the number of tips for investigators in the Lowcountry. Berkeley County saw 18 human trafficking investigations, which is second only to Charleston County’s 31.

Edgar says he hopes to bring awareness to the issue and show people that it is happening wherever they are.

“People really can have an awareness that it is right here in our own backyard,” Edgar says. “And we’re passionate about it, I mean it’s really exciting for me that our church has the opportunity to impact the community by helping these women find their way back to a good life.”

Renovations are the next step for the home.

Edgar says the home needs about $130,000 worth of work.

Reality Church and The Formation Project plan to raise funds to meet renovation costs.

Anyone interested in getting involved can reach out to 843-494-4474 or hope.christmas@realitychurch.com. There is also more information on how to get involved on the project website.

Human trafficking tips can be reported to the 24/7 National Human Trafficking Hotline at 1-888-373-7888.

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