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 girls in search of psychological health remedy trapped in a cage in the again was sentenced Thursday to 18 years in jail.

A Marion County jury found 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 committed the day they died in September 2018, but their households said they weren't violent. Newton was solely seeking medication for her worry and nervousness and Green’s family said she was committed to a mental facility at a regular psychological 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 family members of the ladies mentioned his decision to press forward with the shortest route left an impossible-to-fix gap in their lives.

“This was a deliberate act set in motion by a pompous, stubborn man,” Inexperienced's sister Donnela Inexperienced-Johnson instructed the judge. “He abused the trust my sister, Nikki, Wendy and the state of South Carolina entrusted him with. And for what? To save lots of time.”

Circuit Courtroom Choose William Seales sentenced Flood to five years in jail on every involuntary manslaughter cost and four 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 against a guardrail, stopping the ladies from having 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, in line with testimony from the trial streamed by WMBF-TV.

The deputies said they spoke to the ladies and tried to keep them calm for about an hour because the water saved rising before it acquired too harmful and rescuers could not hear them.

“How awful should which were to take a seat there and wait in your personal dying?” Solicitor Ed Clements mentioned in his closing argument Thursday.

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

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

Clements learn from Flood's assertion to investigators that he felt like once he was in the water, he could not flip round because he may now not see the edge of the highway and was worried about working into a ditch hidden by the water.

“Possibly it wounded his pleasure or stubbornness. I don’t know. He pushed forward into water that was not just standing in a tall puddle, but it surely 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 terrible tragedy, others had been trying to unfairly blame just the previous deputy instead of the tools problems, the troops that waived them across the barricades and supervisors who knew harmful flooding was beginning and despatched him though taking the ladies to the mental health services was not an emergency.

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

Flood did not testify, but before he was sentenced told the judge he tried every thing he could to maintain the women calm as the waters rose and assist was gradual to reach.

“It was a series of errors on my part and other people that led me to that time and I’m sorry for what happened to the women,” Flood said.

Flood and the deputy with him, Joshua Bishop, have been ultimately rescued from the top of the transport van, authorities said. 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 would not open. The delay in getting assist was pricey too. A firefighter testified they were able to reduce the roof off the van and began working on the cage, but the water acquired increased and sooner and it was too dangerous to proceed.

Newton's son Charles mentioned he hated that Flood had to be taught to follow the principles and use common sense at such a steep value.

“I can forgive, but I cannot forget. Thankfully, I nonetheless remember my mother as a cheerful lady, a joyful woman who beloved her family," he stated. “However you, Mr. Flood, will remember my mom by listening to her screams in the back of that van."

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