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 seeking mental health treatment trapped in a cage within the back was sentenced Thursday to 18 years in prison.

A Marion County jury discovered 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 Green, 43, to be involuntarily dedicated the day they died in September 2018, but their households mentioned they were not violent. Newton was solely searching for drugs for her worry and anxiety and Inexperienced’s household mentioned she was dedicated to a psychological facility at a daily mental health appointment by a counselor she had by no means seen before.

Flood, 69, was sentenced about half-hour after the decision and after a number of kinfolk of the ladies stated his choice to press ahead with the shortest route left an impossible-to-fix gap of their lives.

“This was a deliberate act set in movement by a pompous, cussed man,” Inexperienced's sister Donnela Inexperienced-Johnson advised 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 Courtroom Choose William Seales sentenced Flood to 5 years in jail on every involuntary manslaughter charge and four years on each reckless homicide 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, 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 didn't 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 stated they spoke to the women and tried to maintain them calm for about an hour as the water saved rising earlier than it bought too harmful and rescuers might not hear them.

“How terrible must that have been to sit down there and wait for your own dying?” Solicitor Ed Clements said in his closing argument Thursday.

Whereas other elements like an emergency radio that did not notify rescuers of the van's actual location contributed to the deaths, Clements said the drownings all got here out of Flood’s reckless choice to drive 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) by means of water.

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

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

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

Flood's lawyer stated while it was a terrible tragedy, others have been attempting to unfairly blame just the previous deputy instead of the equipment problems, the troops that waived them around the barricades and supervisors who knew dangerous flooding was beginning and despatched him even though taking the ladies to the psychological health facilities was not an emergency.

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

Flood did not testify, however earlier than he was sentenced advised the choose he tried everything he may to keep the ladies calm because the waters rose and assist was slow to arrive.

“It was a sequence of errors on my part and different folks that led me to that time and I’m sorry for what happened to the ladies,” Flood stated.

Flood and the deputy with him, Joshua Bishop, had been eventually 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, nevertheless it still wouldn't open. The delay in getting assist was costly too. A firefighter testified they were capable of cut the roof off the van and started engaged on the cage, but the water bought greater and quicker and it was too harmful to proceed.

Newton's son Charles stated he hated that Flood needed to study to follow the foundations and use frequent sense at such a steep price.

“I can forgive, however I cannot forget. Happily, I nonetheless keep in mind my mom as a cheerful woman, a joyful woman who loved her family," he mentioned. “However you, Mr. Flood, will bear in mind my mother by listening to her screams at the back of that van."

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