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 in the aftermath of Hurricane Florence, drowning two women in search of psychological health treatment 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 homicide.

Judges ordered Wendy Newton, 45, and Nicolette Green, 43, to be involuntarily committed the day they died in September 2018, however their households mentioned they were not violent. Newton was solely looking for drugs for her concern and anxiety and Green’s household said she was committed to a mental facility at a daily mental well being 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 relatives of the ladies said his resolution to press forward with the shortest route left an impossible-to-fix hole of their lives.

“This was a deliberate act set in movement by a pompous, cussed man,” Inexperienced's sister Donnela Green-Johnson told the choose. “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 Court docket Judge William Seales sentenced Flood to five years in prison on each involuntary manslaughter cost and four years on each reckless homicide charge and ordered the sentences served back-to-back.

The floodwaters swept the police van off its wheels in September 2018 and pinned it towards a guardrail, preventing 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, in accordance with testimony from the trial streamed by WMBF-TV.

The deputies said they spoke to the ladies and tried to keep them calm for about an hour as the water stored rising before it bought too dangerous and rescuers may no longer hear them.

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

While other components like an emergency radio that didn't notify rescuers of the van's exact location contributed to the deaths, Clements mentioned the drownings all got here out of Flood’s reckless choice to drive 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) via water.

National 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 learn from Flood's statement to investigators that he felt like as soon as he was in the water, he could not flip around because he could not see the sting of the freeway and was apprehensive about running right into a ditch hidden by the water.

“Maybe it wounded his pleasure or stubbornness. I don’t know. He pushed forward into water that was not just standing in a tall puddle, but it was rushing, 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 attempting to unfairly blame just the previous deputy as an alternative of the tools problems, the troops that waived them around the barricades and supervisors who knew harmful flooding was starting and despatched him though taking the women to the psychological well being facilities was not an emergency.

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

Flood didn't testify, however before he was sentenced informed the choose he tried everything he could to keep the women calm as the waters rose and assist was slow to arrive.

“It was a sequence of mistakes on my half and other 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, have been finally 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 nonetheless wouldn't open. The delay in getting assist was costly too. A firefighter testified they were able to reduce the roof off the van and began working on the cage, however the water obtained higher and sooner and it was too harmful to continue.

Newton's son Charles stated he hated that Flood needed to be taught to follow the rules and use widespread sense at such a steep value.

“I can forgive, but I cannot overlook. Thankfully, I still bear in mind my mom as a cheerful lady, a joyful girl who liked her household," 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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Comply with Jeffrey Collins on Twitter at https://twitter.com/JSCollinsAP.