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 in the aftermath of Hurricane Florence, drowning two women seeking psychological well being therapy trapped in a cage in 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 committed the day they died in September 2018, however their families mentioned they weren't violent. Newton was solely in search of drugs for her concern and anxiety and Inexperienced’s family mentioned she was committed to a psychological facility at an everyday mental health appointment by a counselor she had never seen earlier than.

Flood, 69, was sentenced about 30 minutes after the decision and after several relations of the ladies said his choice 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,” Inexperienced's sister Donnela Inexperienced-Johnson instructed the judge. “He abused the belief my sister, Nikki, Wendy and the state of South Carolina entrusted him with. And for what? To save time.”

Circuit Courtroom Decide William Seales sentenced Flood to 5 years in jail on each involuntary manslaughter cost and four years on every 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 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 didn't 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 stated they spoke to the ladies and tried to maintain them calm for about an hour as the water kept rising before it bought too harmful and rescuers may now not hear them.

“How terrible must that have been to sit there and wait on your personal demise?” Solicitor Ed Clements said in his closing argument Thursday.

While different 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 determination to drive 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) by way of water.

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

Clements learn from Flood's assertion to investigators that he felt like once he was within the water, he couldn't flip around as a result of he might now not see the sting of the freeway and was apprehensive about running into a ditch hidden by the water.

“Possibly it wounded his pride or stubbornness. I don’t know. He pushed forward into water that was not simply 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 said while it was a terrible tragedy, others had been attempting to unfairly blame simply the previous deputy instead of the equipment issues, the troops that waived them across the barricades and supervisors who knew dangerous flooding was starting and sent him though taking the women to the mental well being facilities was not an emergency.

"I ask that you resist the urge to attempt to give justice to these two ladies by giving injustice to this good man," defense lawyer Jarrett Bouchette said. “They want to make him a scapegoat for this accident.”

Flood didn't testify, however before he was sentenced instructed the choose he tried all the pieces he could to maintain the women calm as the waters rose and assist was slow to reach.

“It was a series of errors on my part and different folks that led me to that point and I’m sorry for what happened to the women,” Flood said.

Flood and the deputy with him, Joshua Bishop, were finally rescued from the top of the transport van, authorities stated. 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 still wouldn't open. The delay in getting assist was costly too. A firefighter testified they had been capable of reduce the roof off the van and began working on the cage, but the water got larger and sooner and it was too harmful to continue.

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

“I can forgive, but I cannot forget. Fortunately, I nonetheless bear in mind my mother as a cheerful girl, a joyful woman who loved her household," he stated. “However you, Mr. Flood, will remember 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.