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 women searching for mental well being therapy trapped in a cage in the back was sentenced Thursday to 18 years in jail.

A Marion County jury found 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 Inexperienced, 43, to be involuntarily dedicated the day they died in September 2018, however their families stated they weren't violent. Newton was only in search of drugs for her worry and anxiousness and Green’s household mentioned she was committed to a mental facility at an everyday mental health appointment by a counselor she had never seen earlier than.

Flood, 69, was sentenced about half-hour after the verdict and after several relations of the women mentioned his choice 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, stubborn man,” Green's sister Donnela Inexperienced-Johnson instructed 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 docket Decide William Seales sentenced Flood to 5 years in prison on every involuntary manslaughter cost and 4 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 against a guardrail, preventing the ladies from with the ability 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 line 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 as the water kept rising before it received too dangerous and rescuers could not hear them.

“How awful must which were to sit down there and wait to your own dying?” Solicitor Ed Clements said in his closing argument Thursday.

While other factors like an emergency radio that failed to notify rescuers of the van's actual location contributed to the deaths, Clements stated the drownings all got here out of Flood’s reckless determination to drive 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) through water.

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

Clements read from Flood's statement to investigators that he felt like once he was within the water, he could not turn around as a result of he could not see the edge of the highway and was anxious about operating into a ditch hidden by the water.

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

Flood's lawyer said while it was a terrible tragedy, others were trying to unfairly blame just the former deputy as a substitute of the gear problems, the troops that waived them around the barricades and supervisors who knew dangerous flooding was starting and despatched him despite the fact that taking the women to the psychological well being facilities was not an emergency.

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

Flood didn't testify, however before he was sentenced instructed the choose he tried every part he could to keep the ladies calm as the waters rose and help was gradual to reach.

“It was a collection of mistakes on my part and different people that led me to that time and I’m sorry for what occurred to the girls,” Flood said.

Flood and the deputy with him, Joshua Bishop, were ultimately rescued from the top of the transport van, authorities said. 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 nonetheless wouldn't open. The delay in getting help was costly too. A firefighter testified they have been in a position to lower the roof off the van and began engaged on the cage, however the water obtained larger and quicker and it was too harmful to proceed.

Newton's son Charles said he hated that Flood had to be taught to observe the rules and use common sense at such a steep value.

“I can forgive, but I can't overlook. Fortuitously, I nonetheless bear in mind my mother as a cheerful lady, a joyful lady who loved her household," he stated. “However you, Mr. Flood, will keep in mind my mom by hearing her screams in the back of that van."

———

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