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 girls looking for mental well being remedy 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 homicide.

Judges ordered Wendy Newton, 45, and Nicolette Green, 43, to be involuntarily dedicated the day they died in September 2018, however their households mentioned they weren't violent. Newton was solely seeking medication for her worry and nervousness and Inexperienced’s family mentioned she was dedicated to a psychological facility at a regular psychological health appointment by a counselor she had by no means seen before.

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

“This was a deliberate act set in motion by a pompous, cussed man,” Green's sister Donnela Inexperienced-Johnson advised the choose. “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 docket Decide William Seales sentenced Flood to five years in jail on every involuntary manslaughter cost and 4 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, preventing the women from having 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 stated they spoke to the ladies and tried to keep them calm for about an hour as the water kept rising before it received too harmful and rescuers might no longer hear them.

“How terrible must which have been to take a seat there and wait on your personal demise?” Solicitor Ed Clements said in his closing argument Thursday.

While other factors like an emergency radio that failed to notify rescuers of the van's exact location contributed to the deaths, Clements stated the drownings all came out of Flood’s reckless determination to drive 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) by water.

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

Clements learn from Flood's statement to investigators that he felt like as soon as he was in the water, he could not turn around as a result of he may no longer see the edge of the highway and was nervous about working right into a ditch hidden by the water.

“Possibly it wounded his delight or stubbornness. I don’t know. He pushed forward into water that was not just 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 said.

Flood's lawyer stated while it was a horrible tragedy, others have been attempting to unfairly blame just the previous deputy as a substitute of the equipment issues, the troops that waived them across the barricades and supervisors who knew dangerous flooding was starting and sent him despite the fact that taking the women to the psychological well being facilities was not an emergency.

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

Flood didn't testify, but before he was sentenced informed the choose he tried all the things he could to keep the ladies calm because the waters rose and help was slow to reach.

“It was a sequence of errors on my part and different people that led me to that point and I’m sorry for what occurred to the women,” Flood said.

Flood and the deputy with him, Joshua Bishop, were eventually rescued from the top of the transport van, authorities said. 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 nonetheless would not open. The delay in getting assist was costly too. A firefighter testified they were in a position to minimize the roof off the van and began working on the cage, however the water acquired higher and sooner and it was too harmful to proceed.

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

“I can forgive, but I cannot overlook. Luckily, I nonetheless bear in mind my mom as a cheerful girl, a joyful woman who liked her family," he mentioned. “However you, Mr. Flood, will bear in mind my mom by listening to her screams at the back of that van."

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