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 looking for psychological health therapy trapped in a cage in the back 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 Inexperienced, 43, to be involuntarily dedicated the day they died in September 2018, but their households mentioned they weren't violent. Newton was only searching for medication for her worry and anxiety and Inexperienced’s household said she was dedicated to a mental facility at a regular psychological health appointment by a counselor she had never seen earlier than.

Flood, 69, was sentenced about 30 minutes after the decision and after several relations of the ladies said his choice 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, stubborn man,” Inexperienced's sister Donnela Inexperienced-Johnson told 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 Decide William Seales sentenced Flood to five years in jail on every involuntary manslaughter cost and four years on each reckless homicide 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 women from with 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 said they spoke to the women and tried to keep them calm for about an hour as the water stored rising earlier than it bought too dangerous and rescuers may no longer hear them.

“How terrible must which were to sit down there and wait to your personal demise?” Solicitor Ed Clements said in his closing argument Thursday.

Whereas other factors like an emergency radio that did not notify rescuers of the van's exact location contributed to the deaths, Clements mentioned the drownings all came out of Flood’s reckless resolution to drive 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) via water.

Nationwide guard troops put up barricades on U.S. Freeway 76 just outside Nichols, but 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 round as a result of he may not see the sting of the highway and was worried about working right into a ditch hidden by the water.

“Perhaps 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 surely was rushing, crossing the guardrail. All of it was the Little Pee Dee River by then,” Clements stated.

Flood's lawyer mentioned while it was a horrible tragedy, others were trying to unfairly blame just the previous deputy instead of the tools issues, the troops that waived them across the barricades and supervisors who knew harmful flooding was starting and despatched him although taking the women to the psychological health amenities was not an emergency.

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

Flood didn't testify, however earlier than he was sentenced instructed the decide he tried the whole lot he might to maintain the ladies calm because the waters rose and assist was gradual to arrive.

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

Flood and the deputy with him, Joshua Bishop, had been finally rescued from the top of the transport van, authorities stated. 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 nonetheless would not open. The delay in getting assist was expensive too. A firefighter testified they have been capable of minimize the roof off the van and began engaged on the cage, however the water acquired increased and faster and it was too harmful to proceed.

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

“I can forgive, but I can't neglect. Fortuitously, I nonetheless remember my mother as a contented girl, a joyful girl who liked her family," he mentioned. “However you, Mr. Flood, will keep in mind my mother by listening to her screams in the back of that van."

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