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 searching for mental well being therapy trapped in a cage in the back 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 homicide.

Judges ordered Wendy Newton, 45, and Nicolette Inexperienced, 43, to be involuntarily committed the day they died in September 2018, but their families said they weren't violent. Newton was solely in search of medicine for her fear and anxiousness and Green’s household stated she was dedicated to a psychological facility at a daily mental health appointment by a counselor she had by no means seen before.

Flood, 69, was sentenced about 30 minutes after the verdict and after several relations of the women mentioned his resolution 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,” Inexperienced's sister Donnela Green-Johnson told the choose. “He abused the trust my sister, Nikki, Wendy and the state of South Carolina entrusted him with. And for what? To save lots of time.”

Circuit Court Judge William Seales sentenced Flood to five years in prison on each 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 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 didn't have a key to a second door and there was no emergency escape hatch, in accordance with testimony from the trial streamed by WMBF-TV.

The deputies said they spoke to the women and tried to maintain them calm for about an hour as the water kept rising earlier than it bought too dangerous and rescuers could not hear them.

“How terrible must which have been to sit there and wait in your own loss of life?” Solicitor Ed Clements mentioned in his closing argument Thursday.

While other components 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 choice to drive 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) by way of water.

National guard troops put up barricades on U.S. Freeway 76 simply outdoors Nichols, however Flood drove around 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 could not turn around as a result of he could now not see the sting of the freeway and was nervous about working right into a ditch hidden by the water.

“Perhaps it wounded his pride or stubbornness. I don’t know. He pushed ahead 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 said whereas it was a horrible tragedy, others were trying to unfairly blame simply the former deputy as a substitute of the gear problems, the troops that waived them around the barricades and supervisors who knew harmful flooding was beginning and despatched him though taking the women to the mental health services was not an emergency.

"I ask that you just resist the urge to attempt to give justice to these two girls by giving injustice to this good man," protection lawyer Jarrett Bouchette stated. “They wish to make him a scapegoat for this accident.”

Flood didn't testify, but before he was sentenced told the decide he tried every part he may to keep the ladies calm because the waters rose and help was gradual to arrive.

“It was a sequence of mistakes on my half and other people who led me to that point and I’m sorry for what happened to the girls,” Flood mentioned.

Flood and the deputy with him, Joshua Bishop, had been 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, however it nonetheless wouldn't open. The delay in getting help was expensive too. A firefighter testified they have been capable of reduce the roof off the van and began engaged on the cage, however the water got increased and quicker and it was too harmful to proceed.

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

“I can forgive, but I can't forget. Fortuitously, I still keep in mind my mom as a happy girl, a joyful woman who cherished her household," he said. “However you, Mr. Flood, will remember my mother by listening to her screams behind that van."

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