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 searching for 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 murder.

Judges ordered Wendy Newton, 45, and Nicolette Inexperienced, 43, to be involuntarily committed the day they died in September 2018, but their families stated they were not violent. Newton was only searching for medication for her worry and anxiety and Green’s household said she was committed to a mental facility at an everyday mental health appointment by a counselor she had never seen before.

Flood, 69, was sentenced about half-hour after the verdict and after several kin of the ladies stated his resolution to press ahead with the shortest route left an impossible-to-fix hole in their lives.

“This was a deliberate act set in movement by a pompous, cussed man,” Green's sister Donnela Inexperienced-Johnson advised 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 docket Decide William Seales sentenced Flood to 5 years in prison on every involuntary manslaughter cost and 4 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 against a guardrail, stopping the ladies 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 line with testimony from the trial streamed by WMBF-TV.

The deputies said they spoke to the women and tried to maintain them calm for about an hour because the water stored rising earlier than it received too harmful and rescuers might now not hear them.

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

While other components like an emergency radio that failed to notify rescuers of the van's precise 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.

National guard troops put up barricades on U.S. Freeway 76 just outdoors Nichols, but Flood drove round them after briefly talking to the troopers.

Clements learn from Flood's statement to investigators that he felt like as soon as he was within the water, he couldn't flip round because he may not see the sting of the freeway and was nervous about operating 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 simply standing in a tall puddle, however it was dashing, 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 around the barricades and supervisors who knew dangerous flooding was beginning and sent him despite the fact that taking the ladies to the psychological well being amenities was not an emergency.

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

Flood didn't testify, however earlier than he was sentenced told the choose he tried every thing he might to keep the women calm as the waters rose and assist was sluggish to arrive.

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

Flood and the deputy with him, Joshua Bishop, had been eventually rescued from the highest of the transport van, authorities said. 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 still wouldn't open. The delay in getting assist was pricey too. A firefighter testified they had been able to lower the roof off the van and started working on the cage, but the water received greater and faster and it was too harmful to proceed.

Newton's son Charles mentioned he hated that Flood had to study to comply with the rules and use common sense at such a steep value.

“I can forgive, but I cannot forget. Fortuitously, I nonetheless bear in mind my mom as a happy lady, a joyful girl who liked her household," he stated. “However you, Mr. Flood, will remember my mom by hearing her screams behind that van."

———

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