Man sentenced for killing 2 soldiers in South Carolina

Lexington, S.C. (WCIV) — A man has been sentenced to 40 years in prison after pleading guilty to killing two soldiers who were trying to help a woman being attacked in a South Carolina bar.

News outlets reported that 27-year-old Joseph Elijah Mills of Newberry County was sentenced Thursday in Lexington.

Forty-year-old Staff Sgt. Charles Allen Judge Jr. and Sgt. 1st Class Jonathan Michael Prins died July 24, 2016, after they were shot while trying to help the woman.

Prosecutors said Mills went to the bar looking for his girlfriend and tackled the woman and hit and kicked her. Mills said the woman had stolen drugs.

Bystanders pulled Mills off of the woman and he fired a gun in the air.

Judge and Prins tried to disarm him when they were shot.