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 ladies searching for psychological well being remedy trapped in a cage in 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 homicide.

Judges ordered Wendy Newton, 45, and Nicolette Inexperienced, 43, to be involuntarily committed the day they died in September 2018, but their families said they were not violent. Newton was only searching for medicine for her worry and nervousness and Inexperienced’s family said she was dedicated to a mental facility at a regular mental well being appointment by a counselor she had never seen earlier than.

Flood, 69, was sentenced about half-hour after the decision and after a number of relations of the ladies stated his resolution 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, stubborn man,” Inexperienced's sister Donnela Green-Johnson instructed the choose. “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 Decide William Seales sentenced Flood to 5 years in jail on each involuntary manslaughter charge and 4 years on every reckless homicide cost and ordered the sentences served back-to-back.

The floodwaters swept the police van off its wheels in September 2018 and pinned it in opposition to 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 did not 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 said they spoke to the ladies and tried to maintain them calm for about an hour because the water saved rising earlier than it bought too harmful and rescuers might not hear them.

“How awful must which have been to take a seat there and wait for your own dying?” Solicitor Ed Clements said in his closing argument Thursday.

While other components like an emergency radio that did not 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.

National guard troops put up barricades on U.S. Freeway 76 just exterior Nichols, but Flood drove round them after briefly talking to the soldiers.

Clements learn from Flood's assertion to investigators that he felt like once he was in the water, he could not flip round as a result of he could no longer see the sting of the freeway and was apprehensive about working right into a ditch hidden by the water.

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

Flood's lawyer mentioned whereas it was a terrible tragedy, others had been making an attempt to unfairly blame simply the previous deputy as an alternative of the gear problems, the troops that waived them around the barricades and supervisors who knew dangerous flooding was starting and sent him regardless that taking the ladies to the psychological health services was not an emergency.

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

Flood didn't testify, however before he was sentenced advised the choose he tried every part he may to maintain the ladies calm as the waters rose and assist was sluggish to arrive.

“It was a series of mistakes on my half and other folks that led me to that point and I’m sorry for what happened to the women,” Flood stated.

Flood and the deputy with him, Joshua Bishop, had been finally rescued from the highest 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 help was pricey too. A firefighter testified they have been able to cut the roof off the van and began working on the cage, but the water received increased and quicker and it was too dangerous to continue.

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

“I can forgive, however I cannot overlook. Thankfully, I still bear in mind my mother as a cheerful girl, a joyful girl who liked her family," he mentioned. “However you, Mr. Flood, will remember my mom by listening to her screams at the back of that van."

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