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 within the aftermath of Hurricane Florence, drowning two ladies seeking psychological health therapy trapped in a cage within the back was sentenced Thursday to 18 years in jail.

A Marion County jury found 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, but their families mentioned they weren't violent. Newton was solely seeking medicine for her worry and nervousness and Inexperienced’s family said she was committed to a psychological facility at an everyday psychological health appointment by a counselor she had by no means seen before.

Flood, 69, was sentenced about 30 minutes after the decision and after a number of relatives of the women mentioned 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 movement by a pompous, stubborn man,” Green's sister Donnela Inexperienced-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 time.”

Circuit Court docket Choose William Seales sentenced Flood to five years in jail 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, 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 didn't have a key to a second door and there was no emergency escape hatch, in accordance with testimony from the trial streamed by WMBF-TV.

The deputies said they spoke to the ladies and tried to maintain them calm for about an hour as the water kept rising earlier than it received too dangerous and rescuers might now not hear them.

“How terrible must that have been to take a seat there and wait to your personal demise?” Solicitor Ed Clements mentioned in his closing argument Thursday.

Whereas different factors like an emergency radio that did not notify rescuers of the van's precise location contributed to the deaths, Clements said the drownings all came out of Flood’s reckless choice to drive 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) via water.

Nationwide guard troops put up barricades on U.S. Freeway 76 simply outside Nichols, but Flood drove round them after briefly speaking to the troopers.

Clements learn from Flood's assertion to investigators that he felt like as soon as he was within the water, he couldn't flip around because he could now not see the sting of the highway and was worried about working right into a ditch hidden by the water.

“Perhaps it wounded his satisfaction or stubbornness. I don’t know. He pushed forward into water that was not simply standing in a tall puddle, but 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 have been attempting to unfairly blame just the former deputy as an alternative of the equipment issues, the troops that waived them around the barricades and supervisors who knew dangerous flooding was starting and sent him even though taking the women to the psychological health services was not an emergency.

"I ask that you resist the urge to try 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, but before he was sentenced advised the decide he tried the whole lot he might to keep the women calm as the waters rose and help was slow to reach.

“It was a series of mistakes on my half and other those that led me to that point and I’m sorry for what occurred to the girls,” Flood mentioned.

Flood and the deputy with him, Joshua Bishop, were finally rescued from the top of the transport van, authorities stated. Bishop will stand trial for 2 counts of involuntary manslaughter at a later date.

They tried to shoot the locks off the second door, however it nonetheless would not open. The delay in getting help was expensive too. A firefighter testified they were capable of lower the roof off the van and began engaged on the cage, however the water bought increased and sooner and it was too harmful to continue.

Newton's son Charles said he hated that Flood needed to learn to observe the principles and use widespread sense at such a steep value.

“I can forgive, but I can't overlook. Thankfully, I nonetheless keep in mind my mom as a happy woman, a joyful girl who liked her family," he mentioned. “But you, Mr. Flood, will bear in mind my mom by hearing her screams behind that van."

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