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 seeking mental 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 guilty of two counts of involuntary manslaughter and two counts of reckless murder.

Judges ordered Wendy Newton, 45, and Nicolette Inexperienced, 43, to be involuntarily dedicated the day they died in September 2018, however their families stated they weren't violent. Newton was solely searching for medicine for her worry and anxiousness and Inexperienced’s household said she was committed to a psychological facility at a regular psychological well being appointment by a counselor she had never seen before.

Flood, 69, was sentenced about 30 minutes after the verdict and after several family members of the women stated his resolution to press forward with the shortest route left an impossible-to-fix hole in their lives.

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

Circuit Court docket Judge William Seales sentenced Flood to five years in jail on every involuntary manslaughter cost and four years on each 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 against a guardrail, stopping the women from with the ability 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 women and tried to keep them calm for about an hour because the water saved rising before it got too dangerous and rescuers might now not hear them.

“How terrible should which were to sit down there and wait in your own death?” Solicitor Ed Clements mentioned in his closing argument Thursday.

While different components like an emergency radio that did not notify rescuers of the van's exact location contributed to the deaths, Clements stated the drownings all came out of Flood’s reckless resolution to drive 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) via water.

Nationwide guard troops put up barricades on U.S. Highway 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 within the water, he couldn't turn round as a result of he may now not see the edge of the highway and was worried about working 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 simply standing in a tall puddle, nevertheless it was rushing, crossing the guardrail. All of it was the Little Pee Dee River by then,” Clements said.

Flood's lawyer stated while it was a horrible tragedy, others had been trying to unfairly blame simply the previous deputy as an alternative of the tools problems, the troops that waived them around the barricades and supervisors who knew dangerous flooding was starting and sent him although taking the ladies to the psychological health facilities was not an emergency.

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

Flood did not testify, but before he was sentenced informed the judge he tried the whole lot he might to keep the ladies calm because the waters rose and help was sluggish to reach.

“It was a collection of mistakes on my half and other folks that 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 stated. 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 surely still would not open. The delay in getting assist was costly too. A firefighter testified they had been capable of reduce the roof off the van and started engaged on the cage, however the water acquired increased and sooner and it was too harmful to proceed.

Newton's son Charles stated he hated that Flood needed to study to follow the foundations and use frequent sense at such a steep value.

“I can forgive, but I can not overlook. Luckily, I still bear in mind my mom as a cheerful woman, a joyful girl who cherished her family," he mentioned. “However you, Mr. Flood, will keep in mind my mom by hearing her screams behind that van."

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