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 girls searching for psychological health treatment 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 Green, 43, to be involuntarily dedicated the day they died in September 2018, however their households stated they weren't violent. Newton was solely searching for medication for her worry and nervousness and Green’s family mentioned she was committed to a mental facility at an everyday psychological well being appointment by a counselor she had never seen before.

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

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

Circuit Courtroom Decide William Seales sentenced Flood to 5 years in jail on each involuntary manslaughter cost and four 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 in opposition to a guardrail, preventing the ladies 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 response to testimony from the trial streamed by WMBF-TV.

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

“How awful should which have been to sit there and wait in your own death?” Solicitor Ed Clements said in his closing argument Thursday.

Whereas 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 got here out of Flood’s reckless decision to drive 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) via water.

Nationwide guard troops put up barricades on U.S. Highway 76 just outdoors Nichols, however 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 within the water, he could not turn round as a result of he could no longer see the sting of the highway and was frightened about operating into a ditch hidden by the water.

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

Flood's lawyer mentioned whereas it was a horrible tragedy, others have been making an attempt to unfairly blame simply the former deputy as a substitute of the gear issues, the troops that waived them across the barricades and supervisors who knew harmful flooding was beginning and despatched him despite the fact that taking the ladies to the mental health amenities was not an emergency.

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

Flood didn't testify, but earlier than he was sentenced informed the choose he tried everything he might to keep the ladies calm as the waters rose and help was gradual to arrive.

“It was a sequence of mistakes on my part and other 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 mentioned. Bishop will stand trial for 2 counts of involuntary manslaughter at a later date.

They tried to shoot the locks off the second door, nevertheless it still wouldn't open. The delay in getting help was pricey too. A firefighter testified they had been in a position to cut the roof off the van and started working on the cage, but the water received larger and faster and it was too dangerous to proceed.

Newton's son Charles mentioned he hated that Flood needed to be taught to observe the principles and use frequent sense at such a steep price.

“I can forgive, however I can't neglect. Fortunately, I nonetheless keep in mind my mom as a contented lady, a joyful girl who loved her household," 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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Comply with Jeffrey Collins on Twitter at https://twitter.com/JSCollinsAP.