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 in search of 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 homicide.

Judges ordered Wendy Newton, 45, and Nicolette Green, 43, to be involuntarily dedicated the day they died in September 2018, but their families said they weren't violent. Newton was only in search of medication for her worry and anxiety and Green’s household stated she was committed to a mental facility at a regular psychological well being appointment by a counselor she had by no means seen before.

Flood, 69, was sentenced about half-hour after the decision and after several relations of the ladies said his resolution 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, cussed man,” Green's sister Donnela Inexperienced-Johnson told the judge. “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 Decide William Seales sentenced Flood to 5 years in jail on each involuntary manslaughter charge and four years on every 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 towards a guardrail, preventing the women from having 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, based on 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 as the water kept rising before it acquired too dangerous and rescuers might not hear them.

“How terrible should which have been to sit there and wait on 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 exact location contributed to the deaths, Clements said the drownings all came out of Flood’s reckless decision to drive 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) by means of water.

National guard troops put up barricades on U.S. Freeway 76 simply outdoors Nichols, but Flood drove round them after briefly speaking to the soldiers.

Clements learn from Flood's statement to investigators that he felt like once he was in the water, he could not flip round as a result of he could no longer see the sting of the highway and was fearful about working into a ditch hidden by the water.

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

Flood's lawyer said while it was a horrible tragedy, others have been attempting to unfairly blame just the former deputy instead of the tools problems, the troops that waived them across the barricades and supervisors who knew harmful flooding was beginning and despatched him even though taking the women to the mental health services was not an emergency.

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

Flood did not testify, however before he was sentenced advised the choose he tried all the things he might to keep the ladies calm as the waters rose and help was slow to reach.

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

Flood and the deputy with him, Joshua Bishop, had been eventually rescued from the highest of the transport van, authorities mentioned. 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 assist was pricey too. A firefighter testified they have been in a position to lower the roof off the van and began working on the cage, but the water received increased and quicker and it was too dangerous to proceed.

Newton's son Charles said he hated that Flood had to learn to follow the principles and use common sense at such a steep price.

“I can forgive, but I cannot neglect. Fortuitously, I still keep in mind my mom as a cheerful woman, a joyful girl who cherished her family," he stated. “However you, Mr. Flood, will remember my mom by hearing her screams behind that van."

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