GEORGETOWN, SC (WBTW) – Georgetown city and county leaders are mourning the death of Sheriff Lane Cribb, who died after a brief illness Thursday.
Several deputies went down to Charleston in the evening to escort Sheriff Cribb’s body to Ridgeway Funeral Home on Highmarket Street. Sheriff Cribb died at MUSC Hospital earlier in the day at the age of 73.
Several leaders in the county and beyond are paying tribute to him, and the work he did during almost five decades in law enforcement.
“He treated everybody in the county and in the city as family,” said Mayor Brendon Barber of Georgetown. “That was just Lane. To say that he’s passed and gone away, I just can’t right now fathom any of that.”
Sheriff Cribb was born in Pleasant Hill, a rural community in the county, and first entered law enforcement in 1973. He started as an investigator for the state’s alcohol beverage control, before taking the same role with the Florence County Sheriff’s Office. He then returned to his home county, eventually getting elected sheriff in 1992.
Mayor Barber says he’ll remember Sheriff Cribb as a happy family man.
“The last time we really spent a considerable amount of time together was at the Fourth of July boat parade up in Murrells Inlet,” he said. “We were together on his boat for about two-and-a-half hours touring.”
Rep. Carl Anderson, D-Georgetown, says Sheriff Cribb helped law enforcement throughout the county grow in his 27 years as sheriff, including the inmate re-entry program he started in 2007.
“Some of those young men have been very productive getting back into society and he puts his heart in it,” said Rep. Anderson. “He works very hard at it. His staff, he really represents them well.”
Rep. Anderson also says Sheriff Cribb was dedicated to properly training his deputies to be a positive force in every corner of the county.
“We will get through this because we’ll still be protected by the staff that he left behind,” he said.
Sheriff Cribb’s funeral arrangements have not been set yet.
