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 searching for psychological well being treatment trapped in a cage in 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 murder.

Judges ordered Wendy Newton, 45, and Nicolette Green, 43, to be involuntarily dedicated the day they died in September 2018, however their families said they were not violent. Newton was solely in search of medication for her fear and anxiety and Green’s family said she was committed to a psychological facility at a daily mental health appointment by a counselor she had by no means seen earlier than.

Flood, 69, was sentenced about 30 minutes after the decision and after a number of kin of the ladies said his resolution to press ahead with the shortest route left an impossible-to-fix hole of their lives.

“This was a deliberate act set in movement by a pompous, stubborn man,” Green's sister Donnela Inexperienced-Johnson informed the choose. “He abused the belief 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 5 years in prison on each involuntary manslaughter cost and 4 years on every 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 ladies 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, according to 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 that have been to sit down there and wait to your personal dying?” Solicitor Ed Clements said in his closing argument Thursday.

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

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

Clements learn from Flood's statement to investigators that he felt like once he was in the water, he could not flip round as a result of he could not see the sting of the highway and was anxious about operating 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, but it surely was dashing, crossing the guardrail. All of it was the Little Pee Dee River by then,” Clements stated.

Flood's lawyer stated while it was a terrible tragedy, others were making an attempt to unfairly blame just the previous deputy as a substitute of the gear problems, the troops that waived them across the barricades and supervisors who knew dangerous flooding was starting and despatched him regardless that taking the women to the mental well being facilities was not an emergency.

"I ask that you just resist the urge to try to give justice to these two women by giving injustice to this good man," defense lawyer Jarrett Bouchette mentioned. “They wish to make him a scapegoat for this accident.”

Flood did not testify, however earlier than he was sentenced instructed the choose he tried the whole lot he could to maintain the ladies calm because the waters rose and assist was slow to arrive.

“It was a sequence of mistakes on my part and different those 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, were ultimately 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 assist was expensive too. A firefighter testified they had been able to lower the roof off the van and began engaged on the cage, however the water bought increased and sooner and it was too dangerous to continue.

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

“I can forgive, but I can not neglect. Fortunately, I nonetheless keep in mind my mom as a contented girl, a joyful girl who liked her household," he mentioned. “But you, Mr. Flood, will keep in mind my mother by hearing her screams in the back of that van."

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