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 within the aftermath of Hurricane Florence, drowning two ladies in search of mental health remedy trapped in a cage within 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 Inexperienced, 43, to be involuntarily dedicated the day they died in September 2018, however their households stated they weren't violent. Newton was solely looking for drugs for her concern and anxiousness and Green’s family stated she was dedicated to a mental facility at a daily psychological well being appointment by a counselor she had never seen earlier than.

Flood, 69, was sentenced about 30 minutes after the decision and after a number of kinfolk of the ladies stated his decision to press forward with the shortest route left an impossible-to-fix gap of their lives.

“This was a deliberate act set in motion by a pompous, cussed man,” Inexperienced's sister Donnela Green-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 Courtroom Judge William Seales sentenced Flood to 5 years in prison on every involuntary manslaughter charge and four years on each 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, preventing the ladies from having 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, based on testimony from the trial streamed by WMBF-TV.

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

“How awful should that have been to take a seat there and wait for your personal demise?” Solicitor Ed Clements stated in his closing argument Thursday.

While other factors like an emergency radio that did not 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) by means of water.

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

Clements read from Flood's statement to investigators that he felt like as soon as he was within the water, he could not flip around as a result of he could not see the sting of the highway and was worried about operating into a ditch hidden by the water.

“Possibly it wounded his pride or stubbornness. I don’t know. He pushed ahead into water that was not simply standing in a tall puddle, however it was speeding, crossing the guardrail. All of it was the Little Pee Dee River by then,” Clements said.

Flood's lawyer said whereas it was a horrible tragedy, others were attempting to unfairly blame just the previous deputy instead of the tools problems, the troops that waived them across the barricades and supervisors who knew dangerous flooding was beginning and despatched him despite the fact that taking the women to the psychological health services was not an emergency.

"I ask that you resist the urge to try to give justice to these two women by giving injustice to this good man," defense attorney Jarrett Bouchette stated. “They wish to make him a scapegoat for this accident.”

Flood didn't testify, however before he was sentenced told the choose he tried all the things he may to maintain the ladies calm because the waters rose and help was gradual to arrive.

“It was a sequence of errors on my part and other people who led me to that time and I’m sorry for what happened to the ladies,” Flood stated.

Flood and the deputy with him, Joshua Bishop, have been ultimately rescued from the top of the transport van, authorities said. Bishop will stand trial for two counts of involuntary manslaughter at a later date.

They tried to shoot the locks off the second door, however it still wouldn't open. The delay in getting help was expensive too. A firefighter testified they had been able to reduce the roof off the van and started engaged on the cage, however the water bought higher and faster and it was too dangerous to continue.

Newton's son Charles stated he hated that Flood had to study to follow the principles and use widespread sense at such a steep price.

“I can forgive, but I can't neglect. Thankfully, I nonetheless keep in mind my mom as a cheerful woman, a joyful lady who liked her household," he stated. “However you, Mr. Flood, will remember my mother by hearing her screams behind that van."

———

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