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 girls looking for psychological well being treatment trapped in a cage in the again was sentenced Thursday to 18 years in prison.

A Marion County jury found former Horry County deputy Stephen Flood guilty of two counts of involuntary manslaughter and two counts of reckless homicide.

Judges ordered Wendy Newton, 45, and Nicolette Green, 43, to be involuntarily committed the day they died in September 2018, but their families stated they were not violent. Newton was only searching for medicine for her worry and anxiety and Green’s family said she was dedicated to a psychological facility at an everyday psychological well being appointment by a counselor she had by no means seen before.

Flood, 69, was sentenced about half-hour after the verdict and after several kin of the ladies said his determination to press forward with the shortest route left an impossible-to-fix gap of their lives.

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

Circuit Court Choose 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, stopping the women from being able 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, in accordance with testimony from the trial streamed by WMBF-TV.

The deputies said they spoke to the ladies and tried to maintain them calm for about an hour because the water kept rising before it got too harmful and rescuers may now not hear them.

“How terrible must which have been to take a seat there and wait to your personal loss of life?” Solicitor Ed Clements mentioned in his closing argument Thursday.

Whereas different factors like an emergency radio that failed to notify rescuers of the van's precise location contributed to the deaths, Clements said the drownings all came out of Flood’s reckless choice to drive 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) by means of water.

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

Clements learn from Flood's statement to investigators that he felt like as soon as he was within the water, he could not flip round as a result of he could now not see the sting of the freeway and was fearful about running right into a ditch hidden by the water.

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

Flood's lawyer stated while it was a horrible tragedy, others had been attempting to unfairly blame simply the previous deputy as an alternative of the gear problems, the troops that waived them around the barricades and supervisors who knew dangerous flooding was starting and despatched him regardless that taking the ladies to the mental health facilities was not an emergency.

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

Flood didn't testify, but earlier than he was sentenced informed the choose he tried every little thing he may to maintain the women calm because the waters rose and help was sluggish to reach.

“It was a collection of errors on my part and other those that led me to that point and I’m sorry for what occurred to the ladies,” Flood mentioned.

Flood and the deputy with him, Joshua Bishop, were eventually rescued from the highest 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 nonetheless wouldn't open. The delay in getting help was costly too. A firefighter testified they had been in a position to cut the roof off the van and started working on the cage, but the water obtained increased and faster and it was too dangerous to proceed.

Newton's son Charles said he hated that Flood had to be taught to comply with the rules and use widespread sense at such a steep worth.

“I can forgive, but I can't forget. Thankfully, I nonetheless bear in mind my mom as a contented woman, a joyful girl who loved her family," he stated. “However you, Mr. Flood, will keep in mind 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.