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 women seeking mental health remedy trapped in a cage within the back was sentenced Thursday to 18 years in prison.

A Marion County jury discovered former Horry County deputy Stephen Flood guilty 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 weren't violent. Newton was solely looking for medicine for her worry and nervousness and Inexperienced’s household mentioned 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 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 motion by a pompous, stubborn man,” Green's sister Donnela Inexperienced-Johnson instructed the decide. “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 Choose William Seales sentenced Flood to five years in prison on every involuntary manslaughter charge and four 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 ladies 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, based on testimony from the trial streamed by WMBF-TV.

The deputies said they spoke to the women and tried to keep them calm for about an hour because the water saved rising earlier than it bought too dangerous and rescuers might not hear them.

“How awful must which have been to sit there and wait on your own dying?” Solicitor Ed Clements mentioned in his closing argument Thursday.

While other components like an emergency radio that failed to notify rescuers of the van's actual location contributed to the deaths, Clements mentioned the drownings all came out of Flood’s reckless decision to drive 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) via water.

National guard troops put up barricades on U.S. Highway 76 just 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 once he was in the water, he couldn't turn around because he may not see the sting of the freeway and was apprehensive about running right into a ditch hidden by the water.

“Perhaps it wounded his pleasure or stubbornness. I don’t know. He pushed ahead into water that was not just standing in a tall puddle, nevertheless it was dashing, 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 were attempting to unfairly blame simply the former deputy as an alternative of the tools problems, the troops that waived them across the barricades and supervisors who knew harmful flooding was starting and despatched him even though taking the women to the mental health facilities was not an emergency.

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

Flood did not testify, however earlier than he was sentenced instructed the decide he tried every thing he could to maintain the ladies calm because the waters rose and assist was sluggish to arrive.

“It was a series of errors on my half and other folks that led me to that time and I’m sorry for what occurred to the ladies,” Flood stated.

Flood and the deputy with him, Joshua Bishop, had been ultimately 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, but it surely nonetheless wouldn't open. The delay in getting help was costly too. A firefighter testified they have been capable of cut the roof off the van and began engaged on the cage, but the water acquired higher and faster and it was too dangerous to continue.

Newton's son Charles stated he hated that Flood needed to be taught to comply with the principles and use widespread sense at such a steep worth.

“I can forgive, but I can't forget. Happily, I still remember my mother as a contented woman, a joyful lady who beloved her family," he said. “However you, Mr. Flood, will bear in mind my mom by hearing her screams in the back of that van."

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