Beaufort Co. man charged with homicide by child abuse after toddler’s death in July
A man from northern Beaufort County was accused of killing his 3-year-old son while committing child abuse this past summer.
Demetrius Roshad Moultrie, 35, of Burton, was charged around noon Monday with homicide by child abuse, according to inmate records.
The three-year-old was pronounced dead the night of July 17. Police were called just before 10 p.m. as the “unresponsive” child was being driven to Beaufort Memorial Hospital, according to an incident report from the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office.
The police report labeled the child’s death as “suspicious” and listed the incident location as Moultrie’s home on Kato Lane, located near the Laurel Bay military housing complex.
The toddler’s cause of death and details of Moultrie’s alleged child abuse were unclear. A request for Moultrie’s arrest warrant was not immediately fulfilled.
Beaufort County deputies obtained Moultrie’s arrest warrant in recent days after forensic analysis from the incident was complete, according to Lt. Daniel Allen of the BCSO.
Homicide by child abuse, a felony, is defined under South Carolina law as someone causing or abetting the death of a child under age 11 “while committing child abuse or neglect.” The statute says the circumstances should indicate an “extreme indifference to human life” on the part of the suspect.
For the subsection Moultrie was charged under, a conviction is punishable by a prison sentence between 20 years and life.
The charge can only be applied when the victim is younger than 11 years old — a peculiarity in state law that has invoked scrutiny from officials, including 14th Circuit Solicitor Duffie Stone.
In early 2024, Stone publicly supported a bill that would include all victims under 18 in the statute, which passed in the S.C. Senate but stalled in a House committee.
Moultrie served 18 months probation after pleading guilty to a felony firearms charge in 2013, according to Beaufort County court records. His record since then includes a number of drug charges, including for possession and large-scale trafficking, that have not been adjudicated.
He remained in custody at the Beaufort County Detention Center as of Tuesday afternoon, according to inmate records.
