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 ladies in search of psychological well being therapy trapped in a cage in the again was sentenced Thursday to 18 years in prison.

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

Judges ordered Wendy Newton, 45, and Nicolette Inexperienced, 43, to be involuntarily dedicated the day they died in September 2018, however their families mentioned they weren't violent. Newton was solely seeking drugs for her concern and anxiety and Green’s family stated she was committed to a psychological facility at a daily psychological health appointment by a counselor she had never seen before.

Flood, 69, was sentenced about half-hour after the decision and after a number of relatives of the women stated his resolution 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, cussed man,” Inexperienced's sister Donnela Inexperienced-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 Judge William Seales sentenced Flood to 5 years in jail on each involuntary manslaughter charge and four 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 against 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 keeping with testimony from the trial streamed by WMBF-TV.

The deputies mentioned they spoke to the ladies and tried to keep them calm for about an hour as the water stored rising earlier than it acquired too dangerous and rescuers could not hear them.

“How terrible should which were to sit there and wait to your own dying?” Solicitor Ed Clements stated in his closing argument Thursday.

Whereas other elements like an emergency radio that did not notify rescuers of the van's actual location contributed to the deaths, Clements stated the drownings all came out of Flood’s reckless resolution to drive 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) via water.

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

Clements learn from Flood's assertion to investigators that he felt like once he was within the water, he couldn't flip around as a result of he may no longer see the edge of the highway and was frightened about running into a ditch hidden by the water.

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

Flood's lawyer mentioned while it was a horrible tragedy, others had been trying to unfairly blame just the previous deputy as a substitute of the tools issues, the troops that waived them across 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 try to give justice to these two girls by giving injustice to this good man," protection lawyer Jarrett Bouchette stated. “They wish to make him a scapegoat for this accident.”

Flood didn't testify, however before he was sentenced informed the judge he tried the whole lot he may to maintain the women calm because the waters rose and help was slow to arrive.

“It was a sequence of errors on my part and other people that led me to that time and I’m sorry for what happened to the ladies,” Flood said.

Flood and the deputy with him, Joshua Bishop, have been finally 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, however it nonetheless wouldn't open. The delay in getting help was pricey too. A firefighter testified they had been capable of lower the roof off the van and began working on the cage, but the water bought higher and faster and it was too dangerous to continue.

Newton's son Charles said he hated that Flood needed to be taught to comply with the principles and use widespread sense at such a steep price.

“I can forgive, however I can't overlook. Happily, I still bear in mind my mom as a happy lady, a joyful lady who loved her household," he mentioned. “But you, Mr. Flood, will remember my mom by listening to her screams behind that van."

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