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 women in search of psychological health remedy trapped in a cage within the again was sentenced Thursday to 18 years in prison.

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, but their households stated they weren't violent. Newton was solely looking for drugs for her fear and anxiety and Green’s family stated she was dedicated to a psychological facility at a daily psychological health appointment by a counselor she had by no means seen before.

Flood, 69, was sentenced about 30 minutes after the decision and after a number of family of the ladies said his choice to press ahead with the shortest route left an impossible-to-fix hole of their lives.

“This was a deliberate act set in motion by a pompous, cussed man,” Inexperienced'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 lots of time.”

Circuit Courtroom Judge William Seales sentenced Flood to five years in prison 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 against a guardrail, preventing the ladies 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, in keeping with testimony from the trial streamed by WMBF-TV.

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

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

While other components like an emergency radio that did not notify rescuers of the van's precise location contributed to the deaths, Clements said the drownings all came out of Flood’s reckless resolution to drive 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) by water.

National guard troops put up barricades on U.S. Freeway 76 just exterior Nichols, however Flood drove around them after briefly talking to the soldiers.

Clements learn from Flood's assertion to investigators that he felt like as soon as he was in the water, he could not flip round as a result of he could now not see the sting of the freeway and was worried about working into a ditch hidden by the water.

“Perhaps it wounded his satisfaction or stubbornness. I don’t know. He pushed ahead into water that was not simply standing in a tall puddle, but it surely was dashing, crossing the guardrail. All of it was the Little Pee Dee River by then,” Clements mentioned.

Flood's lawyer said while it was a horrible tragedy, others were making an attempt to unfairly blame simply the previous deputy as an alternative of the gear problems, the troops that waived them around the barricades and supervisors who knew harmful flooding was starting and sent him although taking the ladies to the psychological health facilities was not an emergency.

"I ask that you 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, however earlier than he was sentenced instructed the judge he tried all the pieces he might to keep the women calm as the waters rose and assist was slow to arrive.

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

Flood and the deputy with him, Joshua Bishop, have been ultimately rescued from the top 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 still would not open. The delay in getting assist was expensive too. A firefighter testified they had been able to lower the roof off the van and began engaged on the cage, however the water bought increased and quicker and it was too dangerous to proceed.

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

“I can forgive, but I can't neglect. Happily, I still remember my mom as a contented woman, a joyful woman who loved her household," he said. “However you, Mr. Flood, will keep in mind my mother by hearing her screams at the back of that van."

———

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