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 seeking mental well being therapy trapped in a cage within the back 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 homicide.

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

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

“This was a deliberate act set in movement by a pompous, stubborn man,” Inexperienced's sister Donnela Inexperienced-Johnson told the judge. “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 docket Choose William Seales sentenced Flood to five years in prison on each involuntary manslaughter cost and 4 years on every reckless homicide charge 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 with 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, in accordance with 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 kept rising earlier than it got too dangerous and rescuers might not hear them.

“How awful must which were to sit down there and wait in your personal death?” 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 precise location contributed to the deaths, Clements mentioned the drownings all got here out of Flood’s reckless determination to drive 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) by means of water.

Nationwide guard troops put up barricades on U.S. Freeway 76 simply outdoors Nichols, but Flood drove round them after briefly speaking to the troopers.

Clements read from Flood's assertion to investigators that he felt like as soon as he was within the water, he could not flip round as a result of he could no longer see the sting of the highway and was nervous about running right into a ditch hidden by the water.

“Perhaps it wounded his delight 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 stated.

Flood's lawyer said whereas it was a terrible tragedy, others have been trying to unfairly blame just the former deputy instead of the gear issues, the troops that waived them around the barricades and supervisors who knew dangerous flooding was beginning and despatched him even though taking the ladies to the mental well being services 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 lawyer Jarrett Bouchette said. “They want to make him a scapegoat for this accident.”

Flood didn't testify, however earlier than he was sentenced advised the decide he tried all the pieces he could to maintain the women calm as the waters rose and assist was slow to reach.

“It was a collection of errors on my half and different those that led me to that time and I’m sorry for what occurred to the ladies,” Flood said.

Flood and the deputy with him, Joshua Bishop, were 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 nonetheless wouldn't open. The delay in getting assist was costly too. A firefighter testified they have been capable of minimize the roof off the van and started working on the cage, but the water bought increased and quicker and it was too dangerous to proceed.

Newton's son Charles mentioned he hated that Flood had to study to comply with the foundations and use widespread sense at such a steep price.

“I can forgive, but I can not neglect. Fortuitously, I nonetheless bear in mind my mom as a cheerful lady, a joyful woman who cherished her family," he stated. “However you, Mr. Flood, will keep in mind my mother by hearing her screams in the back of that van."

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