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 ladies in search of psychological well being treatment trapped in a cage in the again was sentenced Thursday to 18 years in jail.

A Marion County jury discovered former Horry County deputy Stephen Flood guilty 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, however their households mentioned they were not violent. Newton was solely searching for medicine for her concern and nervousness and Green’s household mentioned she was dedicated to a mental facility at an everyday 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 relations of the women said his decision to press forward with the shortest route left an impossible-to-fix gap in their lives.

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

Circuit Court Choose William Seales sentenced Flood to 5 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 in opposition to 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 did not have a key to a second door and there was no emergency escape hatch, according to testimony from the trial streamed by WMBF-TV.

The deputies mentioned they spoke to the women and tried to maintain them calm for about an hour as the water saved rising before it acquired too dangerous and rescuers could not hear them.

“How awful should that have been to sit there and wait to your personal death?” Solicitor Ed Clements mentioned in his closing argument Thursday.

Whereas different components like an emergency radio that failed to notify rescuers of the van's actual location contributed to the deaths, Clements mentioned the drownings all got here out of Flood’s reckless decision to drive 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) by way of water.

National guard troops put up barricades on U.S. Highway 76 just outdoors Nichols, but Flood drove round them after briefly talking to the soldiers.

Clements read from Flood's statement to investigators that he felt like once he was in the water, he could not flip around because he may not see the edge of the freeway and was worried about running 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 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 mentioned.

Flood's lawyer stated while it was a terrible tragedy, others have been attempting to unfairly blame just the former deputy as a substitute of the tools issues, the troops that waived them around the barricades and supervisors who knew harmful flooding was beginning and despatched him regardless that taking the women to the psychological health services was not an emergency.

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

Flood didn't testify, however earlier than he was sentenced advised the choose he tried the whole lot he could to keep the ladies calm because the waters rose and assist was sluggish to arrive.

“It was a sequence of errors on my part and different those who led me to that point and I’m sorry for what happened to the ladies,” Flood mentioned.

Flood and the deputy with him, Joshua Bishop, had been eventually 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, however it nonetheless wouldn't open. The delay in getting help was costly too. A firefighter testified they were able to cut the roof off the van and started engaged on the cage, but the water bought higher and faster and it was too harmful to continue.

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

“I can forgive, however I can't neglect. Luckily, I nonetheless remember my mom as a happy woman, a joyful woman who beloved her household," he mentioned. “But you, Mr. Flood, will remember my mom by hearing her screams in the back of that van."

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