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

A Marion County jury discovered 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 Inexperienced, 43, to be involuntarily dedicated the day they died in September 2018, however their families said they weren't violent. Newton was only looking for drugs for her concern and anxiousness and Inexperienced’s family mentioned she was dedicated to a mental facility at an everyday psychological well being appointment by a counselor she had by no means seen before.

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

“This was a deliberate act set in movement by a pompous, cussed man,” Inexperienced's sister Donnela Green-Johnson advised the judge. “He abused the trust my sister, Nikki, Wendy and the state of South Carolina entrusted him with. And for what? To save time.”

Circuit Courtroom Choose William Seales sentenced Flood to five years in prison on each involuntary manslaughter charge and 4 years on each reckless homicide 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 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, based on 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 because the water stored rising before it received too dangerous and rescuers might no longer hear them.

“How awful must which have been to sit down there and wait in your own death?” Solicitor Ed Clements stated in his closing argument Thursday.

While different components like an emergency radio that failed to notify rescuers of the van's precise location contributed to the deaths, Clements stated the drownings all came out of Flood’s reckless decision to drive 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) by way of water.

Nationwide guard troops put up barricades on U.S. Freeway 76 simply exterior Nichols, but Flood drove round 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 could not flip around because he may no longer see the edge of the highway and was anxious about working right into a ditch hidden by the water.

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

Flood's lawyer mentioned while it was a terrible tragedy, others have been trying to unfairly blame just the previous deputy instead of the gear issues, the troops that waived them across the barricades and supervisors who knew harmful flooding was beginning and sent him regardless that taking the ladies to the mental well being services was not an emergency.

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

Flood did not testify, but earlier than he was sentenced advised the choose he tried every thing he may to keep the ladies calm because the waters rose and help was slow to reach.

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

Flood and the deputy with him, Joshua Bishop, were ultimately rescued from the highest of the transport van, authorities stated. Bishop will stand trial for 2 counts of involuntary manslaughter at a later date.

They tried to shoot the locks off the second door, nevertheless it nonetheless would not open. The delay in getting help was costly too. A firefighter testified they were in a position to reduce the roof off the van and started engaged on the cage, but the water received larger and faster and it was too harmful to proceed.

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

“I can forgive, but I can not overlook. Fortuitously, I still bear in mind my mom as a happy woman, a joyful girl who loved 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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Observe Jeffrey Collins on Twitter at https://twitter.com/JSCollinsAP.