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 girls looking for mental health treatment trapped in a cage in the again was sentenced Thursday to 18 years in prison.

A Marion County jury found former Horry County deputy Stephen Flood guilty of two counts of involuntary manslaughter and two counts of reckless murder.

Judges ordered Wendy Newton, 45, and Nicolette Green, 43, to be involuntarily committed the day they died in September 2018, but their families mentioned they weren't violent. Newton was only looking for medicine for her concern and anxiousness and Inexperienced’s family mentioned she was dedicated to a mental facility at a daily mental well being appointment by a counselor she had never seen before.

Flood, 69, was sentenced about 30 minutes after the verdict and after a number of kin of the women said his resolution to press ahead with the shortest route left an impossible-to-fix hole in their lives.

“This was a deliberate act set in movement by a pompous, stubborn man,” Green's sister Donnela Green-Johnson told the choose. “He abused the belief 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 jail on each involuntary manslaughter cost 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, stopping the women from having 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 women and tried to keep them calm for about an hour because the water kept rising earlier than it obtained too dangerous and rescuers could not hear them.

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

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

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

Clements read from Flood's statement to investigators that he felt like as soon as he was in the water, he couldn't turn round because he may now not see the sting of the highway and was apprehensive about working right into a ditch hidden by the water.

“Possibly it wounded his delight 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 stated.

Flood's lawyer said whereas it was a terrible tragedy, others have been trying to unfairly blame just the previous deputy as a substitute of the equipment problems, the troops that waived them around the barricades and supervisors who knew dangerous flooding was starting and despatched him although taking the women to the psychological health amenities was not an emergency.

"I ask that you simply resist the urge to attempt to give justice to these two women by giving injustice to this good man," protection lawyer Jarrett Bouchette mentioned. “They want to make him a scapegoat for this accident.”

Flood didn't testify, however before he was sentenced advised the decide he tried every thing he could to maintain the ladies calm as the waters rose and assist was sluggish to reach.

“It was a series of errors on my half and different people who 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, were finally 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 still wouldn't open. The delay in getting help was expensive too. A firefighter testified they had been in a position to cut the roof off the van and started working on the cage, however the water acquired higher and faster and it was too harmful to continue.

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

“I can forgive, however I cannot forget. Happily, I still bear in mind my mother as a cheerful lady, a joyful girl who cherished her family," he mentioned. “But you, Mr. Flood, will remember my mother by listening to her screams behind that van."

———

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