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 ladies looking for mental well being remedy trapped in a cage within the again was sentenced Thursday to 18 years in jail.

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, but their households said they weren't violent. Newton was solely seeking drugs for her worry and nervousness and Inexperienced’s family said she was committed to a mental facility at an everyday mental well being 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 family of the women mentioned his choice to press forward with the shortest route left an impossible-to-fix hole in their lives.

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

Circuit Courtroom Decide William Seales sentenced Flood to 5 years in prison on each involuntary manslaughter charge and 4 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 having 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 keeping 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 should which were to take a seat there and wait on your personal dying?” Solicitor Ed Clements mentioned in his closing argument Thursday.

While other factors like an emergency radio that didn't notify rescuers of the van's actual location contributed to the deaths, Clements mentioned the drownings all came out of Flood’s reckless choice to drive 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) by way of water.

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

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

“Perhaps it wounded his pride or stubbornness. I don’t know. He pushed ahead into water that was not simply standing in a tall puddle, but it surely was speeding, crossing the guardrail. All of it was the Little Pee Dee River by then,” Clements mentioned.

Flood's lawyer said whereas it was a horrible tragedy, others were attempting to unfairly blame simply the previous deputy instead of the gear problems, the troops that waived them across the barricades and supervisors who knew harmful flooding was beginning and despatched him even though taking the women to the psychological health amenities was not an emergency.

"I ask that you resist the urge to attempt to give justice to those two girls by giving injustice to this good man," defense lawyer Jarrett Bouchette said. “They need to make him a scapegoat for this accident.”

Flood did not testify, but earlier than he was sentenced informed the choose he tried the whole lot he could to keep the women calm as the waters rose and assist was sluggish to arrive.

“It was a series of mistakes on my part and other people that led me to that point and I’m sorry for what occurred to the girls,” Flood stated.

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 still would not open. The delay in getting assist was expensive too. A firefighter testified they have been in a position to minimize the roof off the van and started working on the cage, but the water obtained greater and quicker and it was too harmful to proceed.

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

“I can forgive, however I can not overlook. Fortuitously, I nonetheless keep in mind my mom as a cheerful girl, a joyful woman who liked her family," he said. “However you, Mr. Flood, will remember my mom by hearing her screams at the back of that van."

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