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 seeking psychological health treatment trapped in a cage within 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 Inexperienced, 43, to be involuntarily committed the day they died in September 2018, however their households said they weren't violent. Newton was solely in search of drugs for her worry and nervousness and Green’s family said she was committed to a mental facility at a regular psychological well being appointment by a counselor she had never seen before.

Flood, 69, was sentenced about half-hour after the decision and after a number of relatives of the ladies stated his determination to press ahead with the shortest route left an impossible-to-fix hole of their lives.

“This was a deliberate act set in motion by a pompous, cussed man,” Inexperienced's sister Donnela Inexperienced-Johnson instructed the judge. “He abused the belief my sister, Nikki, Wendy and the state of South Carolina entrusted him with. And for what? To save time.”

Circuit Court docket Judge William Seales sentenced Flood to five years in prison on each involuntary manslaughter cost and four years on each 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 against 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, based on testimony from the trial streamed by WMBF-TV.

The deputies stated they spoke to the women and tried to keep them calm for about an hour as the water kept rising earlier than it got too harmful and rescuers may not hear them.

“How awful must which were to take a seat there and wait in your personal loss of life?” Solicitor Ed Clements stated in his closing argument Thursday.

Whereas other components like an emergency radio that didn't notify rescuers of the van's exact location contributed to the deaths, Clements stated the drownings all got here out of Flood’s reckless choice to drive 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) by means of water.

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

Clements learn from Flood's statement to investigators that he felt like as soon as he was in the water, he couldn't turn around as a result of he could no longer see the sting of the highway and was frightened about running 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, however 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 horrible tragedy, others have been making an attempt to unfairly blame just the former deputy as an alternative of the equipment problems, the troops that waived them around the barricades and supervisors who knew harmful flooding was starting and sent him although 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," defense lawyer Jarrett Bouchette stated. “They need to make him a scapegoat for this accident.”

Flood did not testify, but earlier than he was sentenced told the decide he tried everything he could to keep the ladies calm because the waters rose and assist was slow to reach.

“It was a collection of errors on my part and different folks that led me to that time and I’m sorry for what happened 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 two counts of involuntary manslaughter at a later date.

They tried to shoot the locks off the second door, but it nonetheless would not open. The delay in getting assist was costly too. A firefighter testified they were in a position to reduce the roof off the van and began engaged on the cage, however the water obtained higher and faster and it was too harmful to continue.

Newton's son Charles said he hated that Flood had to be taught to comply with the principles and use widespread sense at such a steep price.

“I can forgive, but I can not neglect. Thankfully, I nonetheless bear in mind my mother as a cheerful lady, a joyful girl who beloved her family," he stated. “But you, Mr. Flood, will remember my mother by listening to her screams in the back of that van."

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