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 in the aftermath of Hurricane Florence, drowning two women searching for mental health treatment trapped in a cage in the again was sentenced Thursday to 18 years in jail.

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

Judges ordered Wendy Newton, 45, and Nicolette Inexperienced, 43, to be involuntarily dedicated the day they died in September 2018, but their households stated they weren't violent. Newton was only looking for drugs for her worry and anxiety and Inexperienced’s family stated she was committed to a psychological facility at a daily psychological well being appointment by a counselor she had by no means seen before.

Flood, 69, was sentenced about 30 minutes after the verdict and after a number of relations of the ladies said his decision 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, stubborn man,” Inexperienced's sister Donnela Green-Johnson advised the choose. “He abused the trust 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 five years in prison on each 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, preventing the women 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, in response to 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 saved rising before it acquired too harmful and rescuers might not hear them.

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

Whereas other components 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 water.

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

Clements learn from Flood's assertion to investigators that he felt like as soon as he was in the water, he could not flip around as a result of he could not see the edge of the highway and was worried about working right into a ditch hidden by the water.

“Maybe it wounded his pleasure or stubbornness. I don’t know. He pushed ahead into water that was not simply 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 stated.

Flood's lawyer stated whereas it was a terrible tragedy, others had been making an attempt to unfairly blame simply the former deputy as an alternative of the tools problems, the troops that waived them around the barricades and supervisors who knew dangerous flooding was beginning and sent him regardless that taking the ladies to the mental well being amenities was not an emergency.

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

Flood did not testify, however before he was sentenced informed the choose he tried everything he might to maintain the ladies calm as the waters rose and help was gradual to reach.

“It was a collection of mistakes on my half and different folks that led me to that time and I’m sorry for what occurred to the ladies,” Flood mentioned.

Flood and the deputy with him, Joshua Bishop, had been eventually rescued from the highest 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, nevertheless it nonetheless would not open. The delay in getting help was costly too. A firefighter testified they have been in a position to lower the roof off the van and started engaged on the cage, however the water received larger and faster and it was too dangerous to proceed.

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

“I can forgive, but I can not forget. Fortuitously, I nonetheless keep in mind my mom as a happy lady, a joyful woman who cherished her family," he mentioned. “But you, Mr. Flood, will keep in mind my mother 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.