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 girls in search of mental well being 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 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 families said they weren't violent. Newton was only searching for medicine for her worry and anxiety and Green’s household mentioned she was committed to a psychological facility at an everyday psychological well being appointment by a counselor she had never seen before.

Flood, 69, was sentenced about 30 minutes after the verdict and after several kinfolk of the ladies mentioned his decision to press ahead with the shortest route left an impossible-to-fix hole in their lives.

“This was a deliberate act set in motion by a pompous, cussed man,” Inexperienced's sister Donnela Green-Johnson instructed the choose. “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 Choose William Seales sentenced Flood to 5 years in prison on every involuntary manslaughter cost and four years on each reckless homicide 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 with 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, based on testimony from the trial streamed by WMBF-TV.

The deputies stated they spoke to the ladies and tried to maintain them calm for about an hour because the water kept rising before it got too harmful and rescuers could not hear them.

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

While different factors like an emergency radio that did not notify rescuers of the van's actual location contributed to the deaths, Clements stated the drownings all got here out of Flood’s reckless decision to drive 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) by means of water.

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

Clements learn from Flood's assertion to investigators that he felt like once he was in the water, he could not turn around as a result of he might not see the edge of the freeway and was frightened about running into a ditch hidden by the water.

“Maybe it wounded his delight 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 said whereas it was a terrible tragedy, others had been trying to unfairly blame just the former deputy instead of the equipment problems, the troops that waived them around the barricades and supervisors who knew harmful flooding was beginning and sent him even though taking the women to the psychological health services was not an emergency.

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

Flood didn't testify, but before he was sentenced informed the decide he tried the whole lot he may to keep the ladies calm because the waters rose and help was gradual to arrive.

“It was a sequence of mistakes on my part and other folks that led me to that time and I’m sorry for what happened to the girls,” Flood mentioned.

Flood and the deputy with him, Joshua Bishop, were eventually rescued from the highest 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 nonetheless would not open. The delay in getting assist was costly too. A firefighter testified they had been in a position to cut the roof off the van and began working on the cage, however the water got greater and quicker and it was too harmful to proceed.

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

“I can forgive, but I can not overlook. Thankfully, I nonetheless keep in mind my mom as a cheerful woman, a joyful girl who beloved her household," he stated. “But you, Mr. Flood, will remember my mom by listening to her screams behind that van."

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