Ex-deputy gets 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 women in search of mental well being remedy trapped in a cage in the again was sentenced Thursday to 18 years in jail.

A Marion County jury found former Horry County deputy Stephen Flood guilty 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, however their households mentioned they weren't violent. Newton was only seeking medication for her concern and anxiety and Inexperienced’s household stated she was committed to a psychological facility at a daily psychological health appointment by a counselor she had never seen before.

Flood, 69, was sentenced about 30 minutes after the decision and after several relatives of the ladies said his decision to press forward with the shortest route left an impossible-to-fix gap of their lives.

“This was a deliberate act set in motion by a pompous, stubborn man,” Green's sister Donnela Inexperienced-Johnson instructed the decide. “He abused the trust my sister, Nikki, Wendy and the state of South Carolina entrusted him with. And for what? To avoid wasting time.”

Circuit Court Decide William Seales sentenced Flood to 5 years in prison on every involuntary manslaughter cost and four 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 against a guardrail, stopping 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 line with testimony from the trial streamed by WMBF-TV.

The deputies mentioned they spoke to the women and tried to keep them calm for about an hour as the water kept rising earlier than it received too harmful and rescuers may not hear them.

“How terrible must which have been to sit there and wait for your own demise?” Solicitor Ed Clements said in his closing argument Thursday.

Whereas different elements like an emergency radio that did not notify rescuers of the van's exact 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 water.

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

Clements read from Flood's assertion to investigators that he felt like once he was in the water, he could not flip around as a result of he may now not see the edge of the highway and was anxious about running right into a ditch hidden by the water.

“Possibly it wounded his pleasure 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 said.

Flood's lawyer said while it was a horrible tragedy, others had been making an attempt to unfairly blame just the previous deputy as an alternative of the tools problems, the troops that waived them across the barricades and supervisors who knew harmful flooding was starting and sent him despite the fact that taking the ladies to the psychological health services was not an emergency.

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

Flood did not testify, however before he was sentenced instructed the choose he tried all the pieces he could to keep the women calm as the waters rose and assist was sluggish to reach.

“It was a sequence of errors 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, were eventually rescued from the highest 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 wouldn't open. The delay in getting help was pricey too. A firefighter testified they have been capable of minimize the roof off the van and began working on the cage, but the water acquired greater and quicker and it was too harmful to proceed.

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

“I can forgive, but I cannot neglect. Fortuitously, I nonetheless remember my mother as a cheerful lady, a joyful lady who beloved her household," he said. “However you, Mr. Flood, will keep in mind my mom by listening to her screams in the back of that van."

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