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 ladies in search of psychological health treatment trapped in a cage in the back was sentenced Thursday to 18 years in prison.

A Marion County jury discovered former Horry County deputy Stephen Flood responsible of two counts of involuntary manslaughter and two counts of reckless homicide.

Judges ordered Wendy Newton, 45, and Nicolette Inexperienced, 43, to be involuntarily committed the day they died in September 2018, but their households said they weren't violent. Newton was solely looking for drugs for her worry and anxiousness and Inexperienced’s family stated she was committed to a mental facility at a daily mental health appointment by a counselor she had by no means seen earlier than.

Flood, 69, was sentenced about half-hour after the decision and after several relatives of the women said his determination to press ahead with the shortest route left an impossible-to-fix gap of their lives.

“This was a deliberate act set in movement by a pompous, cussed man,” Green's sister Donnela Inexperienced-Johnson advised the choose. “He abused the belief 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 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 in opposition to a guardrail, preventing the women 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 accordance 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 kept rising earlier than it obtained too dangerous and rescuers may now not hear them.

“How terrible should that have been to sit down there and wait on your own dying?” Solicitor Ed Clements mentioned in his closing argument Thursday.

Whereas different components like an emergency radio that didn't notify rescuers of the van's precise location contributed to the deaths, Clements said the drownings all came out of Flood’s reckless determination to drive 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) by means of water.

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

Clements read from Flood's statement to investigators that he felt like as soon as he was within the water, he could not flip round as a result of he may now not see the edge of the freeway and was frightened about running into a ditch hidden by the water.

“Perhaps it wounded his pleasure or stubbornness. I don’t know. He pushed ahead into water that was not simply standing in a tall puddle, nevertheless it was speeding, 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 attempting to unfairly blame simply the previous deputy as an alternative of the gear issues, the troops that waived them across the barricades and supervisors who knew dangerous flooding was starting and despatched him despite the fact that taking the women to the psychological well being amenities was not an emergency.

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

Flood didn't testify, but earlier than he was sentenced instructed the choose he tried everything he could to maintain the ladies calm as the waters rose and help was sluggish to reach.

“It was a sequence of mistakes on my half and different those that led me to that time and I’m sorry for what happened to the women,” Flood stated.

Flood and the deputy with him, Joshua Bishop, have been ultimately rescued from the top of the transport van, authorities mentioned. Bishop will stand trial for 2 counts of involuntary manslaughter at a later date.

They tried to shoot the locks off the second door, but it surely still would not open. The delay in getting assist was pricey too. A firefighter testified they had been able to minimize the roof off the van and started engaged on the cage, but the water acquired increased and faster and it was too dangerous to continue.

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

“I can forgive, however I can not neglect. Fortunately, I still bear in mind my mother as a cheerful lady, a joyful lady who cherished her family," he said. “However you, Mr. Flood, will remember my mother by hearing her screams at the back of that van."

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