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 ladies looking for mental health treatment 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 responsible 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 families stated they weren't violent. Newton was only in search of medication for her fear and anxiety and Green’s household said she was committed to a mental facility at a regular mental health appointment by a counselor she had never seen earlier than.

Flood, 69, was sentenced about 30 minutes after the verdict and after a number of family members of the ladies mentioned his determination to press ahead with the shortest route left an impossible-to-fix hole of their lives.

“This was a deliberate act set in movement by a pompous, cussed man,” Inexperienced's sister Donnela Inexperienced-Johnson instructed the judge. “He abused the trust my sister, Nikki, Wendy and the state of South Carolina entrusted him with. And for what? To save time.”

Circuit Courtroom Judge William Seales sentenced Flood to five years in jail on every involuntary manslaughter charge and 4 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, preventing the women from having 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, based on 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 saved rising earlier than it acquired too dangerous and rescuers may no longer hear them.

“How terrible must that have been to take a seat there and wait on your own demise?” Solicitor Ed Clements stated in his closing argument Thursday.

While different elements like an emergency radio that didn't 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.

National guard troops put up barricades on U.S. Highway 76 simply exterior Nichols, however Flood drove around them after briefly speaking to the soldiers.

Clements learn from Flood's assertion to investigators that he felt like once he was within the water, he could not flip around as a result of he might now not see the edge of the highway and was frightened about running right into a ditch hidden by the water.

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

Flood's lawyer said while it was a horrible tragedy, others have been making an attempt to unfairly blame just the former deputy as an alternative of the gear issues, the troops that waived them around the barricades and supervisors who knew harmful flooding was starting and sent him despite the fact that taking the ladies to the mental health facilities 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," defense attorney Jarrett Bouchette said. “They want to make him a scapegoat for this accident.”

Flood did not testify, but before he was sentenced told the judge he tried everything he could to maintain the women calm as the waters rose and assist was sluggish to arrive.

“It was a collection of mistakes on my half and other people that led me to that point and I’m sorry for what occurred to the ladies,” Flood mentioned.

Flood and the deputy with him, Joshua Bishop, have been finally rescued from the top of the transport van, authorities said. 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 nonetheless wouldn't open. The delay in getting assist was costly too. A firefighter testified they had been in a position to minimize the roof off the van and started working on the cage, but the water bought greater and faster and it was too harmful to proceed.

Newton's son Charles said he hated that Flood had to learn to comply with the foundations and use common sense at such a steep worth.

“I can forgive, but I can't overlook. Happily, I still remember my mother as a cheerful woman, a joyful girl who beloved her household," he mentioned. “However you, Mr. Flood, will remember my mother by listening to her screams in the back of that van."

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