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An Upstate South Carolina fire captain is facing a single felony count of second-degree sexual exploitation of a minor, according to booking records.
While the charge offers the only glimpse into the case against him, City of Clinton officials told FITSNews that Glenn “Will” Sickles IV, 34, was terminated within hours of his arrest Friday.
The city further disclosed its now-former fire captain was arrested “in conjunction” with the Laurens County Sheriff’s Office (LCSO) and the S.C. Attorney General’s Office (SCAG).
In a later statement (.pdf), the city vowed to cooperate not only with the sheriff’s office and the attorney general, but with “any other law enforcement agencies involved in the investigation.”
It further directed any and all questions regarding Sickles’ case to the “appropriate investigating agencies.”
“The City of Clinton is committed to maintaining high standards of professional conduct and accountability among its employees and to preserving the safety and trust of the community we serve,” the statement read in part.
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RELATED | FIREFIGHTER STILL ON DUTY AMID CHILD MOLESTATION, INCEST CHARGES
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As for Sickles himself, he was granted a $3,000 bond within hours of his arrest and termination – and has since been released from the Laurens County Detention Center, according to booking records.
Up until that fleeting Friday, Sickles had clocked more than a decade with the City of Clinton Fire Department. According to a since-deleted Facebook post from its official page, he was hired in 2014 and was promoted to the rank of captain in 2024.
Now without his helmet, Sickles becomes the second Upstate firefighter to lose his job amid child sex charges this month.
Earlier this month, both the Mayo and Hilltop fire departments suspended Joshua “Tiny” Nichols within hours of FITSNews exclusively reporting on his pending charges of incest and aggravated child molestation in Chatham County, Georgia.
Despite that revelation and his subsequent suspension, not one commissioner from either the Mayo or Hilltop fire district gave an official response to repeated requests for comment from FITSNews.
This story may be updated.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR…
Andrew Fancher is a Lone Star Emmy Award–winning journalist from Dallas, Texas. He joined FITSNews in 2023 after leaving an NBC affiliate, where he served as on-air talent. His reporting focuses on public corruption in South Carolina, with an emphasis on law enforcement misconduct and abuse of power.
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1 comment
I know NOTHING about the facts of these two cases; but I know much about many other cases where innocents’ lives were destroyed by false child abuyse charges drummed up for private gain in family court or other litigation.
All I would say for now is: (1) Remember the Virginia McMartin Pre-school cases of the 1980s which stretched into the 1990s and the 21st Century WITHOUT a single conviction. (2) Re-listen to the recording FITSNews itself released of Nancy Mace recruiting other women for a sexual molestation “group” lawsuit against Nancy Mace’s former fiance. (3) Innocent until and unless proven guilty. (4) Do not ignore or attack the Eighth Amendment; you might need it some day. And (5) Andy Fancher, for all your looking into Spartanburg County’s former Sheriff Chuck Wright, how have you not seen his former employee, Amanda Star Blanton, a raging lesbian who, when a CPD “investigator,” fabricated a false harassment case against Dr. Marie Faltas and while executing the improper search warrant, Blanton was caught on CPD-made video brandishing the search warrants to a friend and saying, “I signed them for you, Wayne” then lying to CPD Sergeant Passmore and telling him they were “felony” warrants to enable him to threaten to break Dr. Faltas’ door under the warrants if Dr. Faltas did not open voluntarily? Or is all law-enforcement misconduct A-Okay with you so long as it victimizes “only” Dr. Faltas?
Dr. Faltas had, in 1993, written and published an article (and still believes) that homosexuality is a choice, not a genetic trait. To punish Dr. Faltas’ science-based views and to please Blanton’s then-Elgin-based lesbian romance interest, Blanton lied to the courts repeatedly about her witnesses. Dr. Faltas was, thank God, ultimately FULLY acquitted but Blanton was never disciplined in any way. To the contrary, she was protected to point that, when Dr. Faltas subpoenaed Blanton for a 28 March 2011 hearing in the City of Columbia’s Municipal Court (“CMC”) and Blanton had been the day before arrested for disorderly conduct and not yet bonded out, CMC held Dr. Faltas instead in contempt of court.
Why are you not looking into this? And why are you not looking into CMC’s hiring of, and protecting, one Marion Oneida Hanna as a municipal judge when Hanna’s disrespect for judicial decorum was so well known that she was nicknamed in the legal community “Hammering Hanna”?
Why are you not looking into Hammering Hanna’s use of CMC time to write and publish two failed novels?
You see: most of the wrongs later seen in the Murdaugh saga had roots and/or parallels in the mistreatment of Dr. Marie Faltas.
Again, why are you not looking into any of that?