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 searching for psychological health therapy trapped in a cage in the again was sentenced Thursday to 18 years in jail.

A Marion County jury discovered 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 families stated they were not violent. Newton was solely looking for medication for her concern and anxiousness and Green’s family mentioned she was dedicated to a psychological facility at an everyday psychological health appointment by a counselor she had never seen earlier than.

Flood, 69, was sentenced about half-hour after the verdict and after several kin of the ladies mentioned his choice to press ahead with the shortest route left an impossible-to-fix gap of their lives.

“This was a deliberate act set in movement 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 Courtroom Choose William Seales sentenced Flood to five years in prison on each involuntary manslaughter cost and 4 years on every 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 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, according to testimony from the trial streamed by WMBF-TV.

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

“How terrible must that have been to sit there and wait for your own loss of life?” Solicitor Ed Clements said in his closing argument Thursday.

Whereas different elements like an emergency radio that didn't notify rescuers of the van's actual 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) by way of water.

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

Clements read 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 may now not see the edge of the highway and was worried about operating into a ditch hidden by the water.

“Perhaps it wounded his delight or stubbornness. I don’t know. He pushed ahead 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 whereas it was a terrible tragedy, others have been making an attempt 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 sent him though taking the women to the psychological well being facilities was not an emergency.

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

Flood did not testify, but earlier than he was sentenced told the decide he tried all the things he may to keep the women calm as the waters rose and help was gradual to reach.

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

Flood and the deputy with him, Joshua Bishop, have been ultimately rescued from the highest of the transport van, authorities mentioned. 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 still wouldn't open. The delay in getting help was pricey too. A firefighter testified they have been capable of lower the roof off the van and started working on the cage, however the water got higher and sooner and it was too harmful to continue.

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

“I can forgive, but I can not neglect. Thankfully, I still bear in mind my mother as a contented woman, a joyful girl who beloved her household," he mentioned. “However you, Mr. Flood, will remember my mother by listening to her screams behind that van."

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