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 in the aftermath of Hurricane Florence, drowning two women seeking mental well being 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 responsible of two counts of involuntary manslaughter and two counts of reckless murder.

Judges ordered Wendy Newton, 45, and Nicolette Green, 43, to be involuntarily committed the day they died in September 2018, but their households stated they were not violent. Newton was solely searching for drugs for her worry and anxiety and Inexperienced’s family stated she was committed to a psychological facility at an everyday psychological health appointment by a counselor she had by no means seen earlier than.

Flood, 69, was sentenced about 30 minutes after the verdict and after several relatives of the women said 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 belief my sister, Nikki, Wendy and the state of South Carolina entrusted him with. And for what? To avoid wasting time.”

Circuit Court Choose William Seales sentenced Flood to 5 years in jail on every involuntary manslaughter cost 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 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 didn't have a key to a second door and there was no emergency escape hatch, in keeping with testimony from the trial streamed by WMBF-TV.

The deputies mentioned they spoke to the ladies and tried to keep them calm for about an hour as the water stored rising earlier than it got too harmful and rescuers may no longer hear them.

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

While other components like an emergency radio that didn't notify rescuers of the van's actual location contributed to the deaths, Clements stated the drownings all came out of Flood’s reckless resolution to drive 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) by way of water.

Nationwide guard troops put up barricades on U.S. Highway 76 just outside Nichols, however 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 in the water, he couldn't turn around because he might not see the sting of the highway and was anxious about running into a ditch hidden by the water.

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

Flood's lawyer said while it was a terrible tragedy, others have been trying to unfairly blame just the previous deputy instead of the equipment issues, the troops that waived them around the barricades and supervisors who knew dangerous flooding was starting and despatched him though taking the ladies to the psychological well being amenities was not an emergency.

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

Flood didn't testify, but earlier than he was sentenced advised the choose he tried the whole lot he might to maintain the women calm because the waters rose and help was sluggish to arrive.

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

Flood and the deputy with him, Joshua Bishop, had been finally rescued from the top 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, however it nonetheless wouldn't open. The delay in getting assist was expensive too. A firefighter testified they were capable of minimize the roof off the van and started working on the cage, however the water received greater and faster and it was too dangerous to continue.

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

“I can forgive, but I can't neglect. Thankfully, I nonetheless bear in mind my mother as a cheerful woman, a joyful woman who cherished her family," he said. “However you, Mr. Flood, will bear in mind 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.