Ex-deputy gets 18 years after detainees drown in locked van

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- A deputy in South Carolina whose police van was swept away by floodwaters in the aftermath of Hurricane Florence, drowning two women searching for mental well being treatment trapped in a cage within the again was sentenced Thursday to 18 years in prison.

A Marion County jury discovered former Horry County deputy Stephen Flood guilty of two counts of involuntary manslaughter and two counts of reckless homicide.

Judges ordered Wendy Newton, 45, and Nicolette Inexperienced, 43, to be involuntarily committed the day they died in September 2018, however their households stated they weren't violent. Newton was only in search of medication for her worry and anxiousness and Green’s household said she was dedicated to a mental facility at an everyday psychological health appointment by a counselor she had never seen before.

Flood, 69, was sentenced about half-hour after the verdict and after several relations of the ladies stated his determination to press forward with the shortest route left an impossible-to-fix hole in their lives.

“This was a deliberate act set in movement by a pompous, stubborn man,” Green's sister Donnela Green-Johnson instructed the decide. “He abused the belief my sister, Nikki, Wendy and the state of South Carolina entrusted him with. And for what? To save lots of time.”

Circuit Courtroom Choose William Seales sentenced Flood to 5 years in jail on every involuntary manslaughter charge and 4 years on every reckless homicide cost and ordered the sentences served back-to-back.

The floodwaters swept the police van off its wheels in September 2018 and pinned it against a guardrail, stopping the women from with the ability to get out the sliding door they used to enter the van. Flood and a deputy with him did not have a key to a second door and there was no emergency escape hatch, in line with testimony from the trial streamed by WMBF-TV.

The deputies mentioned they spoke to the women and tried to keep them calm for about an hour as the water stored rising earlier than it acquired too harmful and rescuers might not hear them.

“How terrible must which have been to sit there and wait for your own demise?” Solicitor Ed Clements stated in his closing argument Thursday.

Whereas different factors like an emergency radio that didn't notify rescuers of the van's exact location contributed to the deaths, Clements stated the drownings all came out of Flood’s reckless choice to drive 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) by way of water.

National guard troops put up barricades on U.S. Freeway 76 just exterior Nichols, however Flood drove round them after briefly talking to the soldiers.

Clements read from Flood's statement to investigators that he felt like once he was within the water, he could not flip around as a result of he may not see the sting of the highway and was fearful about running right into a ditch hidden by the water.

“Maybe it wounded his delight or stubbornness. I don’t know. He pushed forward into water that was not simply standing in a tall puddle, but it surely was rushing, crossing the guardrail. All of it was the Little Pee Dee River by then,” Clements said.

Flood's lawyer mentioned while it was a horrible tragedy, others have been making an attempt to unfairly blame simply the previous deputy instead of the equipment problems, the troops that waived them around the barricades and supervisors who knew dangerous flooding was starting and sent him regardless that taking the ladies to the psychological health facilities was not an emergency.

"I ask that you simply resist the urge to attempt to give justice to these two girls by giving injustice to this good man," defense lawyer Jarrett Bouchette said. “They wish to make him a scapegoat for this accident.”

Flood did not testify, however before he was sentenced told the decide he tried everything he could to maintain the ladies calm because the waters rose and help was sluggish to reach.

“It was a sequence of errors on my half and other people who led me to that point and I’m sorry for what occurred to the girls,” Flood stated.

Flood and the deputy with him, Joshua Bishop, have been eventually rescued from the top of the transport van, authorities mentioned. Bishop will stand trial for two counts of involuntary manslaughter at a later date.

They tried to shoot the locks off the second door, but it surely still wouldn't open. The delay in getting assist was costly too. A firefighter testified they had been able to minimize the roof off the van and started working on the cage, however the water acquired higher and quicker and it was too dangerous to proceed.

Newton's son Charles mentioned he hated that Flood needed to be taught to follow the foundations and use widespread sense at such a steep worth.

“I can forgive, however I cannot neglect. Luckily, I nonetheless remember my mother as a cheerful woman, a joyful lady who liked her family," he mentioned. “But you, Mr. Flood, will bear in mind my mom by listening to her screams behind that van."

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Follow Jeffrey Collins on Twitter at https://twitter.com/JSCollinsAP.