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 searching for psychological well being treatment 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 homicide.

Judges ordered Wendy Newton, 45, and Nicolette Green, 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 medicine for her fear and anxiousness and Green’s household said she was dedicated to a mental facility at a regular 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 several kinfolk of the women said his resolution to press ahead with the shortest route left an impossible-to-fix gap in their lives.

“This was a deliberate act set in motion by a pompous, cussed man,” Green's sister Donnela Inexperienced-Johnson informed the judge. “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 Courtroom Judge William Seales sentenced Flood to 5 years in prison on every involuntary manslaughter charge and four years on every 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 against a guardrail, preventing the women from having 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 response to 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 because the water stored rising earlier than it got too harmful and rescuers may no longer hear them.

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

While other elements like an emergency radio that failed to notify rescuers of the van's actual location contributed to the deaths, Clements said the drownings all got here out of Flood’s reckless choice to drive 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) through water.

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

Clements read from Flood's statement to investigators that he felt like once he was within the water, he couldn't turn around as a result of he may not see the edge of the freeway and was fearful about running right into a ditch hidden by the water.

“Possibly it wounded his pleasure 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 said.

Flood's lawyer said while it was a horrible tragedy, others were making an attempt to unfairly blame simply the former deputy as an alternative of the equipment problems, the troops that waived them around the barricades and supervisors who knew harmful flooding was beginning and despatched him although taking the women to the mental health services was not an emergency.

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

Flood didn't testify, however before he was sentenced told the decide he tried all the things he could to keep the ladies calm as the waters rose and help was sluggish to arrive.

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

Flood and the deputy with him, Joshua Bishop, were 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, but it surely nonetheless would not open. The delay in getting help was expensive too. A firefighter testified they were in a position to cut the roof off the van and began working on the cage, however the water got larger and sooner and it was too harmful to proceed.

Newton's son Charles mentioned he hated that Flood had to study to observe the rules and use frequent sense at such a steep price.

“I can forgive, however I can not forget. Happily, I still bear in mind my mom as a cheerful lady, a joyful girl who cherished her household," he said. “But you, Mr. Flood, will keep in mind my mom by hearing her screams at the back of that van."

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