South Carolina pastor pulls casket from floodwaters

A pastor waded through murky floodwaters in Ridgeville, S.C., to pull an unearthed casket to dry land on Monday.

As floodwaters from the storm that South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and others have termed a 1-in-1,000-year event continue to recede, officials are still warning residents to stay out of the waters.

Despite those warnings, Wayne Reeves, a pastor at New Life Ministries in Summerville, S.C., said he had no choice but to wade into the water and push the casket back to land, WCBD-TV reported.

"If that was my mom or my dad, I'd walk through h*ll and high water ... and today it happened to be high water," he told WCBD-TV.

Family members watched from the roadway, as the pastor and another man pulled the casket to dry ground. Irlean Thompson, the cousin of the deceased woman, said she believed "God sent him out there" to remove the casket, WCBD-TV reported.

Shortly after the first casket was retrieved, Dorchester County Sheriff's removed a second casket from the waters, according to WCBD-TV.

Thompson and other family members said the caskets belonged to a husband and wife.

"They're already hurt enough, and I don't want them to hurt anymore," Reeves told the news station.

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