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 mental well being treatment trapped in a cage in the back was sentenced Thursday to 18 years in prison.

A Marion County jury found 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 households stated they were not violent. Newton was solely looking for drugs for her fear and nervousness and Green’s family mentioned she was committed to a psychological facility at a daily mental well being 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 kin of the women mentioned his resolution to press forward with the shortest route left an impossible-to-fix gap of their lives.

“This was a deliberate act set in movement by a pompous, cussed man,” Inexperienced's sister Donnela Green-Johnson instructed 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 Judge William Seales sentenced Flood to 5 years in jail on each involuntary manslaughter charge and four years on each 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 against 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 maintain them calm for about an hour as the water saved rising before it received too harmful and rescuers may now not hear them.

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

Whereas different factors like an emergency radio that failed to notify rescuers of the van's exact location contributed to the deaths, Clements mentioned the drownings all got here out of Flood’s reckless choice to drive 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) by means of water.

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

Clements learn from Flood's statement to investigators that he felt like as soon as he was within the water, he couldn't turn round as a result of he could no longer see the edge of the highway and was apprehensive about operating right into a ditch hidden by the water.

“Perhaps it wounded his delight or stubbornness. I don’t know. He pushed forward into water that was not just 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 while it was a horrible tragedy, others had 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 harmful flooding was starting and sent him though taking the women to the mental health facilities was not an emergency.

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

Flood didn't testify, however before he was sentenced advised the choose he tried all the pieces he may to maintain the women calm as the waters rose and help was slow to reach.

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

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

They tried to shoot the locks off the second door, but it nonetheless would not open. The delay in getting assist was costly too. A firefighter testified they have been in a position to reduce the roof off the van and began engaged on the cage, however the water obtained larger and quicker and it was too harmful to continue.

Newton's son Charles mentioned he hated that Flood needed to learn to observe the foundations and use frequent sense at such a steep value.

“I can forgive, however I can't forget. Fortuitously, I still bear in mind my mom as a contented lady, a joyful lady who loved her household," he mentioned. “But you, Mr. Flood, will remember my mom by listening to her screams at the back of that van."

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