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 seeking psychological health therapy trapped in a cage within the back was sentenced Thursday to 18 years in prison.

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 Green, 43, to be involuntarily committed the day they died in September 2018, but their households said they weren't violent. Newton was only in search of drugs for her concern and anxiousness and Inexperienced’s family said she was dedicated to a mental facility at an everyday psychological health appointment by a counselor she had by no means seen earlier than.

Flood, 69, was sentenced about 30 minutes after the decision and after a number of kinfolk of the women said his decision 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, stubborn man,” Green's sister Donnela Inexperienced-Johnson informed the decide. “He abused the belief my sister, Nikki, Wendy and the state of South Carolina entrusted him with. And for what? To avoid wasting time.”

Circuit Court docket Judge William Seales sentenced Flood to 5 years in prison on every involuntary manslaughter cost and 4 years on each reckless homicide 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 women from being able 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 stated they spoke to the ladies and tried to maintain them calm for about an hour as the water kept rising before it got too harmful and rescuers could no longer hear them.

“How awful should which were to sit down there and wait for your personal dying?” Solicitor Ed Clements mentioned in his closing argument Thursday.

Whereas other factors like an emergency radio that did not notify rescuers of the van's actual location contributed to the deaths, Clements said the drownings all came out of Flood’s reckless decision to drive 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) through water.

National guard troops put up barricades on U.S. Highway 76 simply exterior Nichols, but 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 in the water, he could not turn round as a result of he could no longer see the sting of the highway and was fearful about operating right 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 speeding, crossing the guardrail. All of it was the Little Pee Dee River by then,” Clements said.

Flood's lawyer mentioned whereas it was a terrible tragedy, others were trying to unfairly blame just the previous deputy as a substitute of the gear problems, the troops that waived them across the barricades and supervisors who knew dangerous flooding was beginning and despatched him regardless that taking the ladies to the mental health amenities 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," protection attorney Jarrett Bouchette said. “They wish to make him a scapegoat for this accident.”

Flood didn't testify, however earlier than he was sentenced informed the decide he tried everything he might to maintain the ladies calm as the waters rose and help was sluggish to reach.

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

Flood and the deputy with him, Joshua Bishop, have been eventually rescued from the top 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 still would not open. The delay in getting assist was pricey too. A firefighter testified they had been in a position to minimize the roof off the van and started engaged on the cage, but the water acquired increased and quicker and it was too dangerous to proceed.

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

“I can forgive, but I can not neglect. Luckily, I still bear in mind my mom as a contented lady, a joyful girl who beloved her household," he stated. “However you, Mr. Flood, will keep in mind my mom by listening to her screams behind that van."

———

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