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 looking for mental health treatment trapped in a cage within the back was sentenced Thursday to 18 years in prison.

A Marion County jury found 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, but their families mentioned they weren't violent. Newton was solely seeking medicine for her fear and anxiety and Inexperienced’s household mentioned she was committed to a mental facility at a regular mental well being appointment by a counselor she had never seen before.

Flood, 69, was sentenced about 30 minutes after the verdict and after several family of the ladies stated his determination 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 told the judge. “He abused the trust my sister, Nikki, Wendy and the state of South Carolina entrusted him with. And for what? To save time.”

Circuit Court docket Decide William Seales sentenced Flood to five years in jail on every involuntary manslaughter cost and 4 years on every reckless murder charge 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, stopping the ladies from with 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, based on testimony from the trial streamed by WMBF-TV.

The deputies mentioned they spoke to the ladies and tried to maintain them calm for about an hour because the water stored rising earlier than it received too dangerous and rescuers might not hear them.

“How terrible should that have been to take a seat there and wait on your own death?” Solicitor Ed Clements stated in his closing argument Thursday.

While other components like an emergency radio that failed to notify rescuers of the van's actual location contributed to the deaths, Clements said the drownings all came out of Flood’s reckless choice to drive 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) by water.

Nationwide guard troops put up barricades on U.S. Highway 76 simply outside Nichols, however Flood drove round them after briefly talking to the soldiers.

Clements learn from Flood's statement to investigators that he felt like once he was within the water, he could not flip round as a result of he may now not see the edge of the freeway and was worried about working right into a ditch hidden by the water.

“Possibly it wounded his satisfaction or stubbornness. I don’t know. He pushed forward into water that was not just standing in a tall puddle, nevertheless it was dashing, crossing the guardrail. All of it was the Little Pee Dee River by then,” Clements said.

Flood's lawyer said while it was a horrible tragedy, others have been trying to unfairly blame just the former deputy as an alternative of the gear issues, the troops that waived them across the barricades and supervisors who knew harmful flooding was beginning and sent him although taking the women to the mental health 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," defense attorney Jarrett Bouchette mentioned. “They need to make him a scapegoat for this accident.”

Flood did not testify, however before he was sentenced informed the choose he tried every little thing he may to keep the women calm because the waters rose and help was sluggish to reach.

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

Flood and the deputy with him, Joshua Bishop, were ultimately rescued from the top 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, but it still wouldn't open. The delay in getting help was costly too. A firefighter testified they have been capable of lower the roof off the van and began engaged on the cage, but the water got higher and quicker and it was too harmful to continue.

Newton's son Charles mentioned he hated that Flood had to learn to observe the rules and use widespread sense at such a steep price.

“I can forgive, but I can not overlook. Luckily, I still bear in mind my mom as a contented girl, a joyful woman who liked her family," he mentioned. “However you, Mr. Flood, will remember my mother by hearing her screams in the back of that van."

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