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 women searching for psychological well being therapy trapped in a cage in the back was sentenced Thursday to 18 years in jail.

A Marion County jury found 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 dedicated the day they died in September 2018, but their households stated they weren't violent. Newton was solely searching for medicine for her concern and nervousness and Inexperienced’s household said she was dedicated to a psychological facility at a regular mental health appointment by a counselor she had never seen before.

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

“This was a deliberate act set in movement by a pompous, cussed man,” Inexperienced's sister Donnela Inexperienced-Johnson advised the choose. “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 Court Choose William Seales sentenced Flood to five years in jail on every involuntary manslaughter charge and 4 years on every 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, stopping the ladies 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, according to testimony from the trial streamed by WMBF-TV.

The deputies mentioned they spoke to the women and tried to keep them calm for about an hour as the water kept rising before it received too dangerous and rescuers may no longer hear them.

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

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

Clements learn from Flood's statement to investigators that he felt like once he was in the water, he could not flip around as a result of he might not see the sting of the freeway and was frightened about working right into a ditch hidden by the water.

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

Flood's lawyer mentioned while it was a horrible tragedy, others had been trying to unfairly blame simply the former deputy as a substitute of the gear issues, the troops that waived them around the barricades and supervisors who knew dangerous flooding was starting and despatched him though taking the women to the psychological health facilities was not an emergency.

"I ask that you resist the urge to attempt to give justice to these two girls by giving injustice to this good man," defense legal professional Jarrett Bouchette said. “They want to make him a scapegoat for this accident.”

Flood didn't testify, but before he was sentenced told the decide he tried every thing he could to maintain the ladies calm because the waters rose and assist was slow to arrive.

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

Flood and the deputy with him, Joshua Bishop, had been ultimately rescued from the highest of the transport van, authorities said. Bishop will stand trial for 2 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 expensive too. A firefighter testified they were in a position to minimize the roof off the van and started engaged on the cage, but the water obtained higher and sooner and it was too harmful to proceed.

Newton's son Charles mentioned he hated that Flood had to study to follow the rules and use frequent sense at such a steep worth.

“I can forgive, however I can't forget. Thankfully, I still keep in mind my mother as a cheerful girl, a joyful woman who loved her family," he stated. “But you, Mr. Flood, will bear in mind my mother 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.