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 ladies seeking mental well being treatment trapped in a cage in the again 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 committed the day they died in September 2018, but their households mentioned they were not violent. Newton was only searching for drugs for her worry and nervousness and Inexperienced’s household said she was dedicated to a psychological facility at a daily mental health appointment by a counselor she had never seen earlier than.

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

“This was a deliberate act set in movement by a pompous, cussed man,” Green's sister Donnela Green-Johnson advised the decide. “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 Choose William Seales sentenced Flood to five years in jail on every involuntary manslaughter charge 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 in opposition to 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 didn't 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 stored rising earlier than it got too harmful and rescuers could now not hear them.

“How terrible should which have been to take a seat there and wait to your own dying?” Solicitor Ed Clements said in his closing argument Thursday.

While different components like an emergency radio that did not notify rescuers of the van's actual 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) via water.

National guard troops put up barricades on U.S. Freeway 76 simply outside Nichols, however Flood drove round them after briefly speaking to the troopers.

Clements read from Flood's assertion to investigators that he felt like as soon as he was in the water, he couldn't turn round because he may now not see the edge of the freeway and was frightened about operating right into a ditch hidden by the water.

“Maybe it wounded his delight or stubbornness. I don’t know. He pushed ahead 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 stated whereas it was a horrible tragedy, others had been making an attempt to unfairly blame just the former deputy as a substitute of the equipment issues, the troops that waived them around the barricades and supervisors who knew harmful flooding was starting and sent him although taking the ladies to the mental health amenities 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," protection attorney Jarrett Bouchette mentioned. “They wish to make him a scapegoat for this accident.”

Flood didn't testify, but earlier than he was sentenced instructed the decide he tried every thing he may to maintain the women calm as the waters rose and assist was slow to reach.

“It was a series of mistakes on my half and different those that 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, had been ultimately 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 nonetheless wouldn't open. The delay in getting assist was expensive too. A firefighter testified they were in a position to reduce the roof off the van and began engaged on the cage, but the water obtained higher and quicker and it was too harmful to proceed.

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

“I can forgive, but I cannot forget. Fortunately, I still remember my mother as a happy lady, a joyful girl who cherished her family," he stated. “However you, Mr. Flood, will bear in mind my mother by hearing her screams in the back of that van."

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