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 within the aftermath of Hurricane Florence, drowning two ladies seeking psychological health 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 responsible of two counts of involuntary manslaughter and two counts of reckless murder.

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

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

“This was a deliberate act set in motion by a pompous, stubborn man,” Green's sister Donnela Green-Johnson advised the judge. “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 Court docket Choose William Seales sentenced Flood to 5 years in jail on each involuntary manslaughter charge and four years on every reckless homicide charge and ordered the sentences served back-to-back.

The floodwaters swept the police van off its wheels in September 2018 and pinned it towards a guardrail, stopping the ladies from having 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, based on testimony from the trial streamed by WMBF-TV.

The deputies said they spoke to the ladies and tried to keep them calm for about an hour because the water saved rising earlier than it obtained too dangerous and rescuers might now not hear them.

“How awful must which have been to sit down there and wait on your own demise?” Solicitor Ed Clements said in his closing argument Thursday.

While different elements like an emergency radio that didn't notify rescuers of the van's actual location contributed to the deaths, Clements said the drownings all got here out of Flood’s reckless resolution to drive 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) by means of water.

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

Clements learn from Flood's assertion to investigators that he felt like as soon as he was within the water, he couldn't flip round because he may not see the edge of the freeway and was worried about working into a ditch hidden by the water.

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

Flood's lawyer stated whereas it was a terrible tragedy, others were making an attempt to unfairly blame simply the previous deputy as a substitute of the gear issues, the troops that waived them around the barricades and supervisors who knew dangerous flooding was beginning and despatched him even though taking the ladies to the psychological well being facilities was not an emergency.

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

Flood did not testify, however before he was sentenced instructed the decide he tried the whole lot he might to maintain the women calm as the waters rose and help was sluggish to arrive.

“It was a collection 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 said.

Flood and the deputy with him, Joshua Bishop, had been finally 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, however it still wouldn't open. The delay in getting assist was costly too. A firefighter testified they had been able to cut the roof off the van and started engaged on the cage, however the water acquired increased and sooner and it was too dangerous to continue.

Newton's son Charles said he hated that Flood had to be taught to observe the principles and use frequent sense at such a steep worth.

“I can forgive, however I cannot forget. Luckily, I nonetheless bear in mind my mother as a contented girl, a joyful lady who loved her family," he said. “But you, Mr. Flood, will remember my mom by hearing her screams behind that van."

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