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

A Marion County jury found former Horry County deputy Stephen Flood responsible of two counts of involuntary manslaughter and two counts of reckless murder.

Judges ordered Wendy Newton, 45, and Nicolette Green, 43, to be involuntarily dedicated the day they died in September 2018, however their households said they were not violent. Newton was only seeking medicine for her concern and anxiousness and Green’s family said she was dedicated to a mental facility at a regular mental health appointment by a counselor she had never seen earlier than.

Flood, 69, was sentenced about 30 minutes after the verdict and after several family of the ladies mentioned his choice to press ahead with the shortest route left an impossible-to-fix hole in their lives.

“This was a deliberate act set in movement by a pompous, cussed man,” Green's sister Donnela Inexperienced-Johnson advised 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 docket Judge William Seales sentenced Flood to 5 years in jail on each involuntary manslaughter charge 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 in opposition to a guardrail, stopping the women from having 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 accordance 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 before it bought too harmful and rescuers might now not hear them.

“How awful must which were to take a seat there and wait in your personal death?” Solicitor Ed Clements stated in his closing argument Thursday.

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

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

Clements read from Flood's assertion to investigators that he felt like once he was within the water, he could not flip round because he could not see the edge of the freeway and was apprehensive about working right into a ditch hidden by the water.

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

Flood's lawyer mentioned while it was a horrible tragedy, others had been attempting to unfairly blame just the previous deputy as an alternative of the tools issues, the troops that waived them around the barricades and supervisors who knew harmful flooding was starting and despatched him although taking the women to the mental well being amenities was not an emergency.

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

Flood didn't testify, however earlier than he was sentenced told the judge he tried every part he could to maintain the women calm as the waters rose and help was slow to reach.

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

Flood and the deputy with him, Joshua Bishop, were eventually rescued from the highest of the transport van, authorities mentioned. 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 would not open. The delay in getting assist was costly too. A firefighter testified they were able to minimize the roof off the van and started engaged on the cage, but the water bought higher and faster and it was too harmful to proceed.

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

“I can forgive, however I can not neglect. Fortunately, I nonetheless bear in mind my mother as a cheerful lady, a joyful woman who beloved her family," he stated. “However you, Mr. Flood, will keep in mind my mother by listening to her screams in the back of that van."

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