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 in the aftermath of Hurricane Florence, drowning two women searching for mental well being treatment trapped in a cage within the back 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 looking for drugs for her worry and anxiousness and Green’s family stated she was dedicated to a psychological facility at an everyday mental health appointment by a counselor she had by no means seen before.

Flood, 69, was sentenced about 30 minutes after the verdict and after a number of kin of the women stated his resolution 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,” Green's sister Donnela Inexperienced-Johnson instructed the choose. “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 Court Judge William Seales sentenced Flood to 5 years in prison on each involuntary manslaughter charge and 4 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 towards a guardrail, stopping the ladies from being able 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 response to testimony from the trial streamed by WMBF-TV.

The deputies mentioned they spoke to the women and tried to maintain them calm for about an hour because the water saved rising earlier than it received too dangerous and rescuers may no longer hear them.

“How awful should which have been to sit down there and wait on your personal dying?” Solicitor Ed Clements stated in his closing argument Thursday.

While different components like an emergency radio that didn't notify rescuers of the van's precise location contributed to the deaths, Clements stated the drownings all got here out of Flood’s reckless decision to drive 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) by way of water.

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

Clements read from Flood's assertion to investigators that he felt like as soon as he was within the water, he could not turn round because he could now not see the edge of the highway and was apprehensive about running right into a ditch hidden by the water.

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

Flood's lawyer stated while it was a terrible tragedy, others had been making an attempt to unfairly blame just the previous deputy as a substitute of the tools issues, the troops that waived them around the barricades and supervisors who knew dangerous flooding was starting and sent him although taking the ladies to the psychological health services was not an emergency.

"I ask that you simply resist the urge to attempt to give justice to those two girls by giving injustice to this good man," protection legal professional Jarrett Bouchette stated. “They need to make him a scapegoat for this accident.”

Flood didn't testify, however earlier than he was sentenced told the decide he tried every thing he might to keep the ladies calm as the waters rose and help was sluggish to arrive.

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

Flood and the deputy with him, Joshua Bishop, had been ultimately rescued from the top of the transport van, authorities stated. Bishop will stand trial for 2 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 costly too. A firefighter testified they were able to reduce the roof off the van and started working on the cage, however the water received higher and quicker and it was too harmful to proceed.

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

“I can forgive, however I can't overlook. Happily, I nonetheless remember my mom as a cheerful girl, a joyful lady who liked her family," he said. “But you, Mr. Flood, will bear 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.