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 psychological health treatment trapped in a cage in the back was sentenced Thursday to 18 years in jail.

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 Green, 43, to be involuntarily dedicated the day they died in September 2018, but their households said they were not violent. Newton was only in search of medication for her fear and anxiousness and Green’s household stated she was committed 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 verdict and after a number of kin of the ladies stated his resolution to press forward with the shortest route left an impossible-to-fix hole of their lives.

“This was a deliberate act set in movement by a pompous, cussed man,” Inexperienced'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 avoid wasting time.”

Circuit Courtroom Judge William Seales sentenced Flood to five years in jail on each involuntary manslaughter cost 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 in opposition to a guardrail, preventing the ladies from being able 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 response to testimony from the trial streamed by WMBF-TV.

The deputies mentioned they spoke to the ladies and tried to maintain them calm for about an hour because the water saved rising before it acquired too dangerous and rescuers may not hear them.

“How terrible must which have been to take a seat there and wait to your personal death?” Solicitor Ed Clements stated in his closing argument Thursday.

While different factors like an emergency radio that did not notify rescuers of the van's precise 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) by means of water.

National guard troops put up barricades on U.S. Highway 76 simply outside Nichols, however Flood drove round them after briefly talking to the troopers.

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

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

Flood's lawyer mentioned while it was a horrible tragedy, others have been making an attempt to unfairly blame simply the previous deputy as a substitute of the tools problems, the troops that waived them across the barricades and supervisors who knew dangerous flooding was beginning and sent him despite the fact that taking the ladies to the mental health services was not an emergency.

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

Flood didn't testify, but earlier than he was sentenced told the decide he tried every part he could to keep the women calm because the waters rose and help was gradual to arrive.

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

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

They tried to shoot the locks off the second door, but it surely still wouldn't open. The delay in getting help was expensive too. A firefighter testified they have been able to cut the roof off the van and started working on the cage, but the water acquired larger and faster and it was too harmful to proceed.

Newton's son Charles stated he hated that Flood had to learn to observe the principles and use common sense at such a steep value.

“I can forgive, however I cannot overlook. Fortuitously, I still remember my mother as a cheerful lady, a joyful woman who liked her family," he mentioned. “However you, Mr. Flood, will keep in mind my mother by listening to her screams behind that van."

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