Ex-deputy will get 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 girls looking for mental health treatment trapped in a cage in the again was sentenced Thursday to 18 years in jail.

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

Judges ordered Wendy Newton, 45, and Nicolette Green, 43, to be involuntarily committed the day they died in September 2018, however their households said they weren't violent. Newton was solely looking for medicine for her worry and anxiety and Green’s household stated she was committed to a psychological facility at an everyday psychological well being appointment by a counselor she had never seen before.

Flood, 69, was sentenced about half-hour after the decision and after several family of the ladies said his choice to press forward with the shortest route left an impossible-to-fix hole in their lives.

“This was a deliberate act set in motion by a pompous, stubborn man,” Green's sister Donnela Inexperienced-Johnson informed the decide. “He abused the trust my sister, Nikki, Wendy and the state of South Carolina entrusted him with. And for what? To avoid wasting time.”

Circuit Courtroom Judge William Seales sentenced Flood to five years in prison on every involuntary manslaughter cost and 4 years on each 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 in opposition to a guardrail, preventing 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 said they spoke to the women and tried to maintain them calm for about an hour as the water kept rising earlier than it acquired too harmful and rescuers might not hear them.

“How awful should that have been to sit there and wait for your own loss of life?” Solicitor Ed Clements said in his closing argument Thursday.

Whereas other components like an emergency radio that did not notify rescuers of the van's actual location contributed to the deaths, Clements stated the drownings all came out of Flood’s reckless determination to drive 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) through water.

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

Clements learn from Flood's statement to investigators that he felt like as soon as he was in the water, he couldn't flip round as a result of he may not see the edge of the highway and was fearful about operating right into a ditch hidden by the water.

“Possibly it wounded his satisfaction or stubbornness. I don’t know. He pushed forward into water that was not just standing in a tall puddle, nevertheless it was dashing, crossing the guardrail. All of it was the Little Pee Dee River by then,” Clements mentioned.

Flood's lawyer said whereas it was a terrible tragedy, others have been making an attempt to unfairly blame just the former deputy as an alternative of the equipment issues, the troops that waived them across the barricades and supervisors who knew harmful flooding was beginning and sent him even though taking the women to the mental well being services was not an emergency.

"I ask that you just resist the urge to try to give justice to those two girls by giving injustice to this good man," protection lawyer Jarrett Bouchette stated. “They need to make him a scapegoat for this accident.”

Flood did not testify, however earlier than he was sentenced informed the choose he tried every part he may to keep the women calm as the waters rose and assist was sluggish to reach.

“It was a sequence of errors on my part and different those that led me to that time and I’m sorry for what occurred to the women,” Flood mentioned.

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

They tried to shoot the locks off the second door, however it still wouldn't open. The delay in getting assist was expensive too. A firefighter testified they were capable of lower the roof off the van and began engaged on the cage, but the water obtained increased and quicker and it was too harmful to continue.

Newton's son Charles said he hated that Flood had to learn to comply with the rules and use widespread sense at such a steep value.

“I can forgive, but I can not forget. Fortuitously, I nonetheless bear in mind my mother as a happy woman, a joyful woman who beloved her household," he said. “However you, Mr. Flood, will keep in mind my mom by hearing her screams at the back of that van."

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