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 mental well being 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 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 dedicated the day they died in September 2018, but their families said they weren't violent. Newton was only seeking drugs for her worry and anxiety and Inexperienced’s household mentioned she was committed to a psychological facility at an everyday psychological health appointment by a counselor she had by no means seen earlier than.

Flood, 69, was sentenced about 30 minutes after the verdict and after a number of family members of the women said his choice to press forward with the shortest route left an impossible-to-fix gap of their lives.

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

Circuit Courtroom Judge William Seales sentenced Flood to 5 years in jail on every 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 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 line 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 kept rising earlier than it received too dangerous and rescuers might not hear them.

“How terrible must which were to take a seat there and wait for your own dying?” Solicitor Ed Clements mentioned in his closing argument Thursday.

Whereas other factors like an emergency radio that did not notify rescuers of the van's precise location contributed to the deaths, Clements said the drownings all got here out of Flood’s reckless decision to drive 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) by means of water.

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

Clements learn from Flood's assertion to investigators that he felt like once he was in the water, he couldn't flip round because he might no longer see the sting of the freeway and was worried about working 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 just standing in a tall puddle, nevertheless it was speeding, crossing the guardrail. All of it was the Little Pee Dee River by then,” Clements stated.

Flood's lawyer stated while it was a horrible tragedy, others have been making an attempt to unfairly blame just the former deputy instead of the gear problems, the troops that waived them around the barricades and supervisors who knew dangerous flooding was beginning and sent him regardless that taking the women to the psychological health services was not an emergency.

"I ask that you simply resist the urge to try to give justice to these two ladies by giving injustice to this good man," defense legal professional Jarrett Bouchette said. “They wish to make him a scapegoat for this accident.”

Flood didn't testify, however earlier than he was sentenced instructed the judge he tried the whole lot he could to maintain the women calm as the waters rose and assist was sluggish to arrive.

“It was a sequence of errors on my half and other folks that led me to that point and I’m sorry for what happened to the ladies,” Flood stated.

Flood and the deputy with him, Joshua Bishop, have been eventually rescued from the top of the transport van, authorities stated. 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 would not open. The delay in getting help was expensive too. A firefighter testified they were able to cut the roof off the van and started engaged on the cage, however the water received higher and faster and it was too dangerous to proceed.

Newton's son Charles stated he hated that Flood had to learn to follow the principles and use widespread sense at such a steep value.

“I can forgive, but I can not neglect. Happily, I nonetheless keep in mind my mom as a contented woman, a joyful lady who liked her household," he said. “However you, Mr. Flood, will keep in mind my mom by listening to her screams in the back of that van."

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