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 within the aftermath of Hurricane Florence, drowning two girls seeking mental well being treatment trapped in a cage within 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 homicide.

Judges ordered Wendy Newton, 45, and Nicolette Inexperienced, 43, to be involuntarily committed the day they died in September 2018, but their households said they weren't violent. Newton was solely searching for medication for her worry and nervousness and Inexperienced’s household said she was committed to a psychological facility at a daily psychological health appointment by a counselor she had never seen earlier than.

Flood, 69, was sentenced about half-hour after the decision and after a number of relatives of the ladies mentioned his decision to press ahead 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,” Inexperienced's sister Donnela Green-Johnson told 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 Courtroom Judge William Seales sentenced Flood to five years in prison on every involuntary manslaughter cost and 4 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 did not have a key to a second door and there was no emergency escape hatch, based on 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 kept rising before it acquired too harmful and rescuers might not hear them.

“How awful should which were to sit there and wait on your personal dying?” Solicitor Ed Clements said in his closing argument Thursday.

Whereas different factors like an emergency radio that did not notify rescuers of the van's actual 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 way of water.

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

Clements read from Flood's statement to investigators that he felt like as soon as he was within the water, he couldn't turn round as a result of he could not see the sting of the highway and was apprehensive about operating right into a ditch hidden by the water.

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

Flood's lawyer mentioned whereas it was a horrible tragedy, others have been attempting to unfairly blame just the previous deputy instead of the tools issues, 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 mental health services was not an emergency.

"I ask that you just resist the urge to attempt to give justice to these two girls by giving injustice to this good man," defense legal professional Jarrett Bouchette mentioned. “They wish to make him a scapegoat for this accident.”

Flood didn't testify, however before he was sentenced instructed the decide he tried the whole lot he might to keep the ladies calm because the waters rose and help was slow to reach.

“It was a sequence of errors on my half and other people that led me to that time and I’m sorry for what occurred to the girls,” Flood mentioned.

Flood and the deputy with him, Joshua Bishop, have been ultimately rescued from the highest of the transport van, authorities stated. Bishop will stand trial for 2 counts of involuntary manslaughter at a later date.

They tried to shoot the locks off the second door, nevertheless it nonetheless would not open. The delay in getting help was pricey too. A firefighter testified they had been capable of minimize the roof off the van and started engaged on the cage, but the water received increased and sooner and it was too harmful to continue.

Newton's son Charles mentioned he hated that Flood needed to study to follow the principles and use frequent sense at such a steep value.

“I can forgive, but I cannot forget. Happily, I nonetheless keep in mind my mom as a cheerful lady, a joyful woman who beloved her family," he said. “However you, Mr. Flood, will bear in mind my mom by hearing her screams at the back of that van."

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