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 women seeking mental health therapy trapped in a cage within the again was sentenced Thursday to 18 years in prison.

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 Inexperienced, 43, to be involuntarily committed the day they died in September 2018, however their households said they weren't violent. Newton was solely searching for drugs for her fear and anxiousness and Green’s family stated she was dedicated to a psychological facility at an everyday psychological health 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 family of the ladies stated 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 movement by a pompous, cussed man,” Inexperienced's sister Donnela Inexperienced-Johnson informed the choose. “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 Courtroom Judge William Seales sentenced Flood to five years in prison on every involuntary manslaughter charge and 4 years on every 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 towards 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 did not have a key to a second door and there was no emergency escape hatch, in keeping with testimony from the trial streamed by WMBF-TV.

The deputies stated they spoke to the women 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 should which were to sit there and wait for your own death?” Solicitor Ed Clements mentioned in his closing argument Thursday.

While other elements like an emergency radio that didn't notify rescuers of the van's precise location contributed to the deaths, Clements said the drownings all got here out of Flood’s reckless determination to drive 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) by way of water.

Nationwide guard troops put up barricades on U.S. Highway 76 simply exterior Nichols, however Flood drove round them after briefly talking to the soldiers.

Clements read from Flood's statement to investigators that he felt like once he was in the water, he could not turn around as a result of he could not see the sting of the freeway and was apprehensive about operating right into a ditch hidden by the water.

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

Flood's lawyer said while it was a horrible tragedy, others had been making an attempt to unfairly blame simply the previous deputy as a substitute of the gear issues, the troops that waived them across the barricades and supervisors who knew harmful flooding was beginning and despatched him although taking the ladies to the psychological health services was not an emergency.

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

Flood didn't testify, but before he was sentenced instructed the judge he tried all the things he might to maintain the ladies calm as the waters rose and help was slow to arrive.

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

Flood and the deputy with him, Joshua Bishop, have been finally rescued from the top of the transport van, authorities stated. Bishop will stand trial for two counts of involuntary manslaughter at a later date.

They tried to shoot the locks off the second door, nevertheless it nonetheless wouldn't open. The delay in getting assist was costly too. A firefighter testified they have been able to lower the roof off the van and began engaged on the cage, but the water bought larger and faster and it was too harmful to continue.

Newton's son Charles said he hated that Flood had to learn to comply with the rules and use common sense at such a steep worth.

“I can forgive, however I cannot neglect. Thankfully, I still keep in mind my mother as a contented lady, a joyful girl who cherished her household," he mentioned. “But you, Mr. Flood, will bear in mind my mother by hearing her screams at the back of that van."

———

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