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 in the aftermath of Hurricane Florence, drowning two women searching for mental well being treatment 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 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, but their families stated they weren't violent. Newton was solely seeking medicine for her fear and nervousness and Green’s household said she was committed to a psychological facility at a daily mental health appointment by a counselor she had never seen before.

Flood, 69, was sentenced about half-hour after the verdict and after several relatives of the ladies mentioned 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 motion by a pompous, stubborn 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 time.”

Circuit Court docket Decide William Seales sentenced Flood to 5 years in jail on every 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 towards 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 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 stated 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 dangerous and rescuers could now not hear them.

“How awful must which were to take a seat there and wait in your personal dying?” 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 mentioned the drownings all got here out of Flood’s reckless decision to drive 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) via water.

National 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 in the water, he couldn't flip around because he may no longer see the edge of the highway and was apprehensive about operating 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 mentioned.

Flood's lawyer mentioned while it was a terrible tragedy, others were 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 dangerous flooding was beginning and despatched him although 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 those two ladies by giving injustice to this good man," protection attorney Jarrett Bouchette stated. “They need to make him a scapegoat for this accident.”

Flood did not testify, but before he was sentenced instructed the judge he tried the whole lot he could to keep the women calm as the waters rose and assist was sluggish to arrive.

“It was a series of errors on my half and other 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, were ultimately rescued from the highest of the transport van, authorities said. 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 nonetheless would not open. The delay in getting help was expensive too. A firefighter testified they had been able to cut the roof off the van and started engaged on the cage, but the water got larger and faster and it was too dangerous to continue.

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

“I can forgive, but I can not overlook. Fortunately, I still bear in mind my mom as a happy lady, a joyful lady who cherished her household," he said. “However you, Mr. Flood, will keep in mind my mother by listening to her screams in the back of that van."

———

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