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 psychological health treatment trapped in a cage in the again 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 Green, 43, to be involuntarily dedicated the day they died in September 2018, however their households said they weren't violent. Newton was only seeking drugs for her concern and anxiousness and Green’s family stated she was committed to a mental facility at a daily mental well being appointment by a counselor she had never seen before.

Flood, 69, was sentenced about half-hour after the decision and after several family members of the women stated his decision to press forward 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,” Inexperienced's sister Donnela Green-Johnson informed the decide. “He abused the trust my sister, Nikki, Wendy and the state of South Carolina entrusted him with. And for what? To save lots of time.”

Circuit Courtroom Choose William Seales sentenced Flood to five years in prison on each involuntary manslaughter cost and four years on each 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 in opposition to 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, based on testimony from the trial streamed by WMBF-TV.

The deputies said they spoke to the ladies and tried to maintain them calm for about an hour because the water kept rising earlier than it bought too harmful and rescuers could no longer hear them.

“How terrible must that have been to sit there and wait to your own loss of life?” Solicitor Ed Clements stated in his closing argument Thursday.

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

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

Clements read from Flood's assertion to investigators that he felt like once he was in the water, he couldn't turn round as a result of he could not see the edge of the freeway and was apprehensive about running into a ditch hidden by the water.

“Perhaps 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 were making an attempt to unfairly blame just the former deputy as a substitute of the gear problems, the troops that waived them around the barricades and supervisors who knew dangerous flooding was starting and sent him regardless 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 women by giving injustice to this good man," protection attorney Jarrett Bouchette said. “They need to make him a scapegoat for this accident.”

Flood did not testify, but before he was sentenced informed the choose he tried all the things he could to keep the ladies calm because the waters rose and assist was slow to arrive.

“It was a sequence of mistakes on my half and different those who led me to that time and I’m sorry for what occurred to the women,” Flood mentioned.

Flood and the deputy with him, Joshua Bishop, were finally rescued from the top of the transport van, authorities said. Bishop will stand trial for two counts of involuntary manslaughter at a later date.

They tried to shoot the locks off the second door, but it surely nonetheless would not open. The delay in getting help was costly too. A firefighter testified they have been in a position to minimize the roof off the van and started engaged on the cage, however the water got increased and quicker and it was too dangerous to continue.

Newton's son Charles said he hated that Flood had to be taught to comply with the foundations and use common sense at such a steep worth.

“I can forgive, however I can't neglect. Fortuitously, I still remember my mother as a cheerful girl, a joyful girl who cherished her family," he said. “However you, Mr. Flood, will keep in mind my mother by hearing her screams at the back of that van."

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