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 looking for psychological health therapy trapped in a cage in the again 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 stated they weren't violent. Newton was only searching for medicine for her concern and nervousness and Green’s household said she was dedicated to a mental facility at a regular mental health appointment by a counselor she had by no means seen before.

Flood, 69, was sentenced about half-hour after the decision and after a number of family 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, cussed man,” Green's sister Donnela Green-Johnson advised the choose. “He abused the trust my sister, Nikki, Wendy and the state of South Carolina entrusted him with. And for what? To save time.”

Circuit Court Decide William Seales sentenced Flood to 5 years in prison on each involuntary manslaughter cost and 4 years on every reckless murder cost 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 women from being able 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 ladies and tried to keep them calm for about an hour because the water saved rising earlier than it got too harmful and rescuers could not hear them.

“How awful should which were to sit down there and wait in your personal demise?” Solicitor Ed Clements mentioned in his closing argument Thursday.

While other 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 got here out of Flood’s reckless resolution to drive 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) through water.

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

Clements learn from Flood's statement to investigators that he felt like once he was in the water, he could not flip around because he might not see the sting of the highway and was apprehensive about working 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 dashing, crossing the guardrail. All of it was the Little Pee Dee River by then,” Clements said.

Flood's lawyer mentioned whereas it was a terrible tragedy, others were attempting to unfairly blame just the previous deputy as a substitute of the tools issues, the troops that waived them across the barricades and supervisors who knew dangerous flooding was starting and sent him although taking the ladies to the psychological well being amenities was not an emergency.

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

Flood didn't testify, however before he was sentenced instructed the judge he tried all the things he may to keep the ladies calm as the waters rose and help was sluggish to reach.

“It was a sequence of mistakes on my half and other those that led me to that time and I’m sorry for what happened to the girls,” Flood said.

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

They tried to shoot the locks off the second door, nevertheless it still wouldn't open. The delay in getting assist was costly too. A firefighter testified they have been able to reduce the roof off the van and began engaged on the cage, however the water obtained higher and quicker and it was too harmful to proceed.

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

“I can forgive, however I cannot neglect. Luckily, I nonetheless keep in mind my mom as a contented woman, a joyful lady who liked her household," he said. “However you, Mr. Flood, will keep in mind my mom by listening to her screams at the back of that van."

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