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 in search of mental well being treatment trapped in a cage within 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 committed the day they died in September 2018, however their families said they were not violent. Newton was only searching for drugs for her fear and anxiousness and Green’s family mentioned she was dedicated to a psychological facility at an everyday 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 said his decision 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, stubborn man,” Inexperienced's sister Donnela Green-Johnson told 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 Courtroom Judge William Seales sentenced Flood to 5 years in prison on each involuntary manslaughter cost and 4 years on each 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 in opposition to a guardrail, stopping the ladies from with 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, in keeping with testimony from the trial streamed by WMBF-TV.

The deputies said they spoke to the ladies and tried to maintain them calm for about an hour as the water kept rising before it obtained too dangerous and rescuers may no longer hear them.

“How awful should which have been to sit there and wait for your personal death?” Solicitor Ed Clements said in his closing argument Thursday.

Whereas other elements like an emergency radio that failed to notify rescuers of the van's actual location contributed to the deaths, Clements stated 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 just outdoors Nichols, but Flood drove round them after briefly speaking to the troopers.

Clements read from Flood's assertion to investigators that he felt like once he was in the water, he could not flip around because he could not see the sting of the highway and was fearful about running right into a ditch hidden by the water.

“Maybe it wounded his delight 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 mentioned while it was a terrible tragedy, others have been making an attempt to unfairly blame just the former deputy as an alternative of the tools problems, the troops that waived them across the barricades and supervisors who knew harmful flooding was starting and despatched him even though taking the ladies to the mental well being amenities 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," defense lawyer Jarrett Bouchette mentioned. “They wish to make him a scapegoat for this accident.”

Flood didn't testify, but before he was sentenced advised the choose he tried every little thing he could to keep the women calm because the waters rose and help was gradual to arrive.

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

Flood and the deputy with him, Joshua Bishop, had been finally rescued from the highest 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, however it still wouldn't open. The delay in getting help was expensive too. A firefighter testified they had been in a position to minimize the roof off the van and began engaged on the cage, however the water acquired higher and faster and it was too dangerous to proceed.

Newton's son Charles stated he hated that Flood had to be taught to follow the foundations and use widespread sense at such a steep value.

“I can forgive, however I can not neglect. Luckily, I nonetheless keep in mind my mom as a cheerful woman, a joyful girl who beloved her family," he said. “But you, Mr. Flood, will remember my mom by listening to her screams at the back of that van."

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