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 searching for mental health therapy trapped in a cage within the back was sentenced Thursday to 18 years in prison.

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 dedicated the day they died in September 2018, but their households mentioned they weren't violent. Newton was solely in search of medication for her fear and anxiousness and Green’s household mentioned she was committed to a mental facility at a daily psychological health appointment by a counselor she had by no means seen earlier than.

Flood, 69, was sentenced about half-hour after the verdict and after several kinfolk of the women mentioned his resolution to press forward with the shortest route left an impossible-to-fix hole in their lives.

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

Circuit Court Judge William Seales sentenced Flood to 5 years in jail on every involuntary manslaughter charge 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 towards a guardrail, stopping the ladies from being able 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 accordance with testimony from the trial streamed by WMBF-TV.

The deputies mentioned they spoke to the ladies and tried to keep them calm for about an hour because the water kept rising before it bought too harmful and rescuers may no longer hear them.

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

Whereas other elements like an emergency radio that didn't notify rescuers of the van's precise location contributed to the deaths, Clements mentioned the drownings all came out of Flood’s reckless decision to drive 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) through water.

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

Clements learn from Flood's statement to investigators that he felt like as soon as he was in the water, he could not turn round as a result of he might now not see the edge of the highway and was worried about working right into a ditch hidden by the water.

“Maybe it wounded his satisfaction or stubbornness. I don’t know. He pushed ahead into water that was not just standing in a tall puddle, however it was rushing, crossing the guardrail. All of it was the Little Pee Dee River by then,” Clements said.

Flood's lawyer stated whereas it was a horrible tragedy, others have been making an attempt to unfairly blame simply the previous deputy as an alternative of the gear issues, the troops that waived them around the barricades and supervisors who knew dangerous flooding was starting and sent him even though taking the ladies to the mental well being amenities was not an emergency.

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

Flood did not testify, but before he was sentenced instructed the choose he tried all the things he could to keep the ladies calm as the waters rose and assist was slow to reach.

“It was a series of mistakes on my part and other people who led me to that point and I’m sorry for what occurred to the girls,” Flood stated.

Flood and the deputy with him, Joshua Bishop, had been finally 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 surely nonetheless would not open. The delay in getting help was expensive too. A firefighter testified they have been in a position to reduce the roof off the van and began engaged on the cage, however the water received larger and quicker and it was too harmful to continue.

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

“I can forgive, however I cannot overlook. Fortunately, I nonetheless keep in mind my mother as a cheerful girl, a joyful girl who loved her household," he said. “However you, Mr. Flood, will remember my mother 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.