Ex-deputy gets 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 well being remedy 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 responsible of two counts of involuntary manslaughter and two counts of reckless homicide.

Judges ordered Wendy Newton, 45, and Nicolette Inexperienced, 43, to be involuntarily committed the day they died in September 2018, however their families said they were not violent. Newton was solely searching for drugs for her concern and nervousness and Inexperienced’s household stated she was committed to a psychological facility at an everyday psychological well being appointment by a counselor she had never seen earlier than.

Flood, 69, was sentenced about half-hour after the decision and after several family members of the ladies mentioned his decision to press forward with the shortest route left an impossible-to-fix hole in their lives.

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

Circuit Court Decide William Seales sentenced Flood to five years in jail on every involuntary manslaughter cost and four years on each 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 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, according to 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 as the water stored rising earlier than it got too harmful and rescuers could now not hear them.

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

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

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

Clements read from Flood's statement to investigators that he felt like once he was in the water, he could not turn round as a result of he could no longer see the edge of the highway and was nervous about operating right into a ditch hidden by the water.

“Maybe it wounded his delight or stubbornness. I don’t know. He pushed ahead into water that was not simply standing in a tall puddle, however it was rushing, crossing the guardrail. All of it was the Little Pee Dee River by then,” Clements stated.

Flood's lawyer stated whereas it was a terrible tragedy, others had been making an attempt to unfairly blame just the former deputy as an alternative of the gear problems, the troops that waived them across the barricades and supervisors who knew dangerous flooding was starting and despatched him even though taking the ladies to the psychological health amenities was not an emergency.

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

Flood did not testify, but before he was sentenced told the decide he tried every little thing he may to maintain the ladies calm because the waters rose and assist was sluggish to arrive.

“It was a collection of errors on my half and other people who 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, 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 wouldn't 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 higher and faster and it was too harmful to continue.

Newton's son Charles said he hated that Flood had to study to comply with the foundations and use widespread sense at such a steep value.

“I can forgive, however I can not forget. Happily, I nonetheless remember my mom as a cheerful woman, a joyful woman who beloved her family," he stated. “But you, Mr. Flood, will remember my mother by listening to her screams at the back of that van."

———

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