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

A Marion County jury discovered 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 Inexperienced, 43, to be involuntarily committed the day they died in September 2018, but their households stated they were not violent. Newton was solely searching for medication for her concern and nervousness and Inexperienced’s family stated she was committed to a mental facility at an everyday 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 family of the ladies stated his resolution to press ahead with the shortest route left an impossible-to-fix hole in their lives.

“This was a deliberate act set in motion by a pompous, cussed man,” Inexperienced's sister Donnela Inexperienced-Johnson advised 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 Choose William Seales sentenced Flood to 5 years in prison on every involuntary manslaughter charge and 4 years on each reckless murder cost 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, 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 line with testimony from the trial streamed by WMBF-TV.

The deputies said they spoke to the women and tried to keep them calm for about an hour because the water stored rising before it got too harmful and rescuers might no longer hear them.

“How awful must that have been to sit down there and wait for your own demise?” Solicitor Ed Clements mentioned in his closing argument Thursday.

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

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

Clements learn from Flood's statement to investigators that he felt like as soon as he was in the water, he couldn't turn around because he may now not see the sting of the freeway and was anxious about operating right 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 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 mentioned.

Flood's lawyer stated whereas it was a terrible tragedy, others had been attempting to unfairly blame simply the former deputy instead of the gear issues, the troops that waived them around the barricades and supervisors who knew harmful flooding was beginning and sent him despite the fact that taking the women to the mental well being amenities was not an emergency.

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

Flood did not testify, but before he was sentenced advised the decide he tried all the things he might to keep the ladies calm as the waters rose and assist was sluggish to arrive.

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

Flood and the deputy with him, Joshua Bishop, were ultimately rescued from the highest 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, nevertheless it nonetheless would not open. The delay in getting assist was costly too. A firefighter testified they had been in a position to reduce the roof off the van and started engaged on the cage, however the water acquired greater and faster and it was too harmful to continue.

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

“I can forgive, but I can not overlook. Fortunately, I nonetheless keep in mind my mother as a cheerful girl, a joyful lady who cherished her household," he stated. “But you, Mr. Flood, will bear in mind my mother by listening to her screams in the back of that van."

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