A beachfront property belonging to a South Carolina judge has burned to the ground in a huge fire that sent three members of her family to hospital, including her former-state senator husband.
Circuit Court Judge Diane Goodstein, 69, was out walking her dogs when the blaze erupted at the luxury Jeremy Cay gated community at approximately 11.30am Saturday morning at Edisto Beach.
Her husband, Arnold Goodstein, 81, and other members of the family had to escape via its upper stories as the fire took hold. They were subsequently rescued from the boggy marshland in which they had sought refuge by emergency services personnel in kayaks.
South Carolina Chief Justice John Kittredge subsequently told FitsNews that the fire began with an “apparent explosion.”
“Judge Goodstein was walking on the beach when the fire started,” he said. “Her husband, Arnie, was in the house with children and perhaps grandchildren. The family had to escape by jumping from a window or balcony. I’m told there were injuries from the fall, such as broken legs.
“Arnie’s injuries may have been the most serious, for he was airlifted to the hospital.”
Arnold Goodstein, a Democrat, served in the South Carolina House of Representatives from 1971 to 1973 and the state Senate in 1969 and 1970 and then again from 1975 to 1979.
The couple’s son, Arnold Goodstein III, and a third person were also taken to the emergency room for treatment.
The Goodsteins’ four bedroom, four bathroom property was reportedly valued at $1.55m.
A spokesperson for the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division said the department is currently investigating the cause of the fire and had yet to determine whether it was an accident or the result of arson.
Last month, Judge Goodstein oversaw a controversial case weighing whether or not her state should hand over sensitive voter registration documents to the federal government and ultimately ruled against Donald Trump’s administration.
The Department of Justice had requested that South Carolina officials turn over the personal data of more than 3.3 million voters, revealing their names, addresses, birthdates, driver’s license numbers and the last four digits of their Social Security numbers.
The administration was seeking to compare the information with a separate database in order to root out alleged illegal immigrants it suspected were being unlawfully permitted to cast votes in state elections.
Judge Goodstein had reportedly received multiple death threats in response to her September 2 ruling, which placed her at odds with Trump and South Carolina’s Republican Gov. Henry McMaster, who said the circuit court was “wrong” to place itself in the way of the U.S. government and filed an emergency petition to overturn the verdict.
The South Carolina Supreme Court duly sided with McMaster, dropping Goodstein’s temporary restraining order in a six-page opinion on September 11 that argued that the judge had not made clear what damage she believed the original plaintiff – local voting rights activist Anne Crook – might suffer if the data were released.
