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 searching for psychological well being remedy trapped in a cage in the back was sentenced Thursday to 18 years in jail.

A Marion County jury found former Horry County deputy Stephen Flood responsible of two counts of involuntary manslaughter and two counts of reckless murder.

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 were not violent. Newton was only in search of medicine for her fear and anxiety and Green’s household stated she was committed to a mental facility at an everyday psychological health appointment by a counselor she had by no means seen before.

Flood, 69, was sentenced about half-hour after the decision and after a number of relatives 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, cussed man,” Inexperienced's sister Donnela Inexperienced-Johnson instructed the judge. “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 Court docket Decide William Seales sentenced Flood to five 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 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 mentioned they spoke to the women and tried to keep them calm for about an hour as the water kept rising earlier than it received too dangerous and rescuers could no longer hear them.

“How awful should that have been to take a seat there and wait in your own 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 precise location contributed to the deaths, Clements said the drownings all came out of Flood’s reckless resolution to drive 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) by means of water.

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

Clements learn from Flood's assertion to investigators that he felt like once he was within the water, he couldn't flip around as a result of he might not see the sting of the freeway and was worried about running right into a ditch hidden by the water.

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

Flood's lawyer said while it was a terrible tragedy, others had been trying to unfairly blame simply the former deputy as an alternative of the tools issues, the troops that waived them across the barricades and supervisors who knew harmful flooding was beginning and sent him although taking the women to the psychological health facilities was not an emergency.

"I ask that you resist the urge to attempt to give justice to these two ladies 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, however before he was sentenced advised the choose he tried every thing he might to maintain the women calm as the waters rose and assist was gradual to arrive.

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

Flood and the deputy with him, Joshua Bishop, had been finally 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, but it nonetheless would not open. The delay in getting help was costly too. A firefighter testified they have been in a position to reduce the roof off the van and began engaged on the cage, however the water acquired greater and quicker and it was too dangerous to continue.

Newton's son Charles stated he hated that Flood needed to be taught to observe the foundations and use common sense at such a steep worth.

“I can forgive, however I can not forget. Fortuitously, I still keep in mind my mom as a cheerful woman, a joyful woman who loved her family," he stated. “But you, Mr. Flood, will bear in mind my mother by listening to her screams behind that van."

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