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 women searching for psychological health 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 guilty of two counts of involuntary manslaughter and two counts of reckless homicide.

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 searching for drugs for her worry and anxiousness and Inexperienced’s household said she was committed to a psychological facility at a daily mental well being appointment by a counselor she had by no means seen earlier than.

Flood, 69, was sentenced about half-hour after the verdict and after a number of kin of the women stated his decision to press forward with the shortest route left an impossible-to-fix gap in their lives.

“This was a deliberate act set in motion by a pompous, cussed man,” Inexperienced's sister Donnela Green-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 save lots of time.”

Circuit Court Judge William Seales sentenced Flood to five years in prison on each involuntary manslaughter charge and 4 years on each reckless murder charge 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, 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 didn't have a key to a second door and there was no emergency escape hatch, according to testimony from the trial streamed by WMBF-TV.

The deputies mentioned they spoke to the ladies and tried to maintain them calm for about an hour because the water kept rising before it got too harmful and rescuers may no longer hear them.

“How terrible must which were to take a seat there and wait for your own demise?” Solicitor Ed Clements stated in his closing argument Thursday.

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

National guard troops put up barricades on U.S. Freeway 76 simply exterior Nichols, but Flood drove around 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 could not flip around as a result of he could now not see the edge of the freeway and was nervous about operating right into a ditch hidden by the water.

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

Flood's lawyer mentioned while it was a horrible tragedy, others were making an attempt to unfairly blame just the previous deputy as an alternative of the gear problems, the troops that waived them around the barricades and supervisors who knew harmful flooding was beginning and despatched him although taking the women to the psychological health amenities was not an emergency.

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

Flood did not testify, however before he was sentenced informed the choose he tried every part he could to maintain the ladies calm because the waters rose and help was gradual to arrive.

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

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 2 counts of involuntary manslaughter at a later date.

They tried to shoot the locks off the second door, but it surely still wouldn't open. The delay in getting assist was costly too. A firefighter testified they have been in a position to cut the roof off the van and started engaged on the cage, however the water received greater and sooner and it was too harmful to continue.

Newton's son Charles said he hated that Flood had to study to observe the rules and use common sense at such a steep value.

“I can forgive, however I cannot overlook. Fortuitously, I nonetheless keep in mind my mother as a cheerful lady, a joyful woman who beloved her family," he mentioned. “However you, Mr. Flood, will keep in mind my mom by hearing her screams in the back of that van."

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