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 girls seeking mental well being treatment trapped in a cage within the again 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 murder.

Judges ordered Wendy Newton, 45, and Nicolette Green, 43, to be involuntarily dedicated the day they died in September 2018, however their households mentioned they weren't violent. Newton was solely seeking medicine for her concern and anxiousness and Inexperienced’s family mentioned she was dedicated to a mental 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 relatives of the ladies stated his decision to press ahead with the shortest route left an impossible-to-fix gap in their lives.

“This was a deliberate act set in movement by a pompous, cussed man,” Green's sister Donnela Inexperienced-Johnson told the decide. “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 docket Choose William Seales sentenced Flood to five years in jail on each involuntary manslaughter charge and 4 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 ladies from being able 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, in accordance with testimony from the trial streamed by WMBF-TV.

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

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

While different elements like an emergency radio that failed to notify rescuers of the van's precise location contributed to the deaths, Clements said the drownings all got here out of Flood’s reckless determination to drive 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) by way of water.

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

Clements learn from Flood's statement to investigators that he felt like once he was within the water, he couldn't turn around because he could not see the edge of the freeway and was worried about operating into a ditch hidden by the water.

“Perhaps it wounded his satisfaction or stubbornness. I don’t know. He pushed ahead 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 said.

Flood's lawyer mentioned whereas it was a terrible tragedy, others were trying to unfairly blame simply the previous deputy as an alternative of the tools issues, the troops that waived them around the barricades and supervisors who knew harmful flooding was beginning and despatched him despite the fact that taking the ladies to the mental health amenities was not an emergency.

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

Flood didn't testify, however earlier than he was sentenced told the judge he tried every little thing he could to keep the ladies calm as the waters rose and help was gradual 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 occurred to the ladies,” Flood mentioned.

Flood and the deputy with him, Joshua Bishop, have been eventually rescued from the top of the transport van, authorities mentioned. 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 surely still would not open. The delay in getting help was pricey too. A firefighter testified they had been capable of minimize the roof off the van and began engaged on the cage, but the water received higher and faster and it was too dangerous to proceed.

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

“I can forgive, but I can't overlook. Thankfully, I still keep in mind my mom as a cheerful lady, a joyful lady who cherished her household," he mentioned. “However you, Mr. Flood, will remember my mother by listening to her screams in the back of that van."

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