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 seeking mental well being 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 guilty of two counts of involuntary manslaughter and two counts of reckless homicide.

Judges ordered Wendy Newton, 45, and Nicolette Green, 43, to be involuntarily dedicated the day they died in September 2018, however their households mentioned they weren't violent. Newton was solely searching for medication for her worry and nervousness and Green’s household mentioned she was committed to a mental facility at an everyday psychological well being appointment by a counselor she had by no means seen before.

Flood, 69, was sentenced about 30 minutes after the verdict and after a number of relatives of the women said his choice 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,” Green's sister Donnela Inexperienced-Johnson informed the judge. “He abused the belief my sister, Nikki, Wendy and the state of South Carolina entrusted him with. And for what? To save lots of time.”

Circuit Court docket Judge William Seales sentenced Flood to five years in prison on every involuntary manslaughter charge and four years on every reckless murder cost 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 ladies 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, based on testimony from the trial streamed by WMBF-TV.

The deputies mentioned they spoke to the ladies and tried to keep them calm for about an hour because the water stored rising earlier than it acquired too dangerous and rescuers may now not hear them.

“How awful should that have been to sit there and wait in your own demise?” Solicitor Ed Clements said in his closing argument Thursday.

Whereas different components like an emergency radio that failed to notify rescuers of the van's exact location contributed to the deaths, Clements said the drownings all got here out of Flood’s reckless resolution to drive 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) by water.

Nationwide guard troops put up barricades on U.S. Freeway 76 just outside Nichols, but Flood drove round them after briefly speaking to the troopers.

Clements learn from Flood's assertion to investigators that he felt like once he was within the water, he couldn't turn round as a result of he may no longer see the edge of the freeway and was frightened about working into a ditch hidden by the water.

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

Flood's lawyer stated while it was a horrible tragedy, others have been trying to unfairly blame simply the previous deputy as an alternative of the equipment issues, the troops that waived them around the barricades and supervisors who knew harmful flooding was starting and despatched him regardless that taking the ladies to the psychological health services was not an emergency.

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

Flood did not testify, but earlier than he was sentenced told the decide he tried every little thing he could to maintain the ladies calm as the waters rose and assist was gradual to arrive.

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

Flood and the deputy with him, Joshua Bishop, were ultimately 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, however it nonetheless wouldn't open. The delay in getting help was expensive too. A firefighter testified they were in a position to minimize the roof off the van and began working on the cage, however the water bought larger and sooner and it was too harmful to continue.

Newton's son Charles mentioned he hated that Flood needed to learn to observe the foundations and use widespread sense at such a steep worth.

“I can forgive, but I cannot forget. Thankfully, I nonetheless keep in mind my mother as a cheerful girl, a joyful woman who loved her household," he mentioned. “However you, Mr. Flood, will bear 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.