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 psychological health remedy trapped in a cage in the back 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 Inexperienced, 43, to be involuntarily committed the day they died in September 2018, however their families mentioned they were not violent. Newton was only searching for medication for her fear and anxiety and Green’s family stated she was dedicated to a mental facility at a daily mental well being appointment by a counselor she had by no means seen earlier than.

Flood, 69, was sentenced about 30 minutes after the decision and after several kinfolk of the ladies stated his decision to press ahead with the shortest route left an impossible-to-fix gap in their lives.

“This was a deliberate act set in movement by a pompous, cussed man,” Green's sister Donnela Inexperienced-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 save time.”

Circuit Court Judge William Seales sentenced Flood to 5 years in prison on every involuntary manslaughter charge and 4 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 in opposition to a guardrail, preventing the women 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, according to testimony from the trial streamed by WMBF-TV.

The deputies stated they spoke to the ladies and tried to keep them calm for about an hour as the water stored rising before it obtained too harmful and rescuers could not hear them.

“How awful must that have been to sit there and wait for your own loss of life?” Solicitor Ed Clements stated in his closing argument Thursday.

Whereas different factors like an emergency radio that did not notify rescuers of the van's actual location contributed to the deaths, Clements stated the drownings all got here out of Flood’s reckless determination to drive 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) by water.

Nationwide guard troops put up barricades on U.S. Highway 76 just outside Nichols, but Flood drove around them after briefly talking to the soldiers.

Clements learn from Flood's statement to investigators that he felt like as soon as he was within the water, he couldn't turn around as a result of he could now not see the sting of the highway and was frightened about operating right into a ditch hidden by the water.

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

Flood's lawyer said while it was a horrible tragedy, others have been trying to unfairly blame simply the previous deputy as a substitute of the gear problems, the troops that waived them across the barricades and supervisors who knew dangerous flooding was starting and despatched him although taking the women to the mental health facilities 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," protection attorney Jarrett Bouchette mentioned. “They wish to make him a scapegoat for this accident.”

Flood didn't testify, but before he was sentenced informed the judge he tried everything he might to keep the women calm because the waters rose and help was slow to arrive.

“It was a sequence of errors on my part and different folks that led me to that point and I’m sorry for what occurred to the girls,” Flood said.

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

They tried to shoot the locks off the second door, but it nonetheless wouldn't open. The delay in getting help was pricey too. A firefighter testified they have been in a position to reduce the roof off the van and started working on the cage, however the water obtained higher and quicker and it was too harmful to proceed.

Newton's son Charles stated he hated that Flood needed to learn to observe the rules and use common sense at such a steep price.

“I can forgive, however I cannot overlook. Fortunately, I nonetheless remember my mom as a happy girl, a joyful girl who beloved her household," he stated. “However you, Mr. Flood, will keep in mind my mother by hearing her screams behind that van."

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