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 ladies searching for mental health treatment trapped in a cage within the again 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 committed the day they died in September 2018, however their households stated they weren't violent. Newton was only looking for medication for her worry and nervousness and Green’s family said she was committed to a mental facility at a regular mental well being appointment by a counselor she had never seen before.

Flood, 69, was sentenced about half-hour after the decision and after several family of the women stated his decision to press ahead with the shortest route left an impossible-to-fix gap in their lives.

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

Circuit Court Judge William Seales sentenced Flood to 5 years in prison on each involuntary manslaughter cost and 4 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 in opposition to 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 didn't 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 women and tried to keep them calm for about an hour as the water saved rising before it bought too harmful and rescuers might not hear them.

“How terrible should which were to take a seat there and wait to your own dying?” Solicitor Ed Clements said in his closing argument Thursday.

Whereas different factors like an emergency radio that didn't notify rescuers of the van's precise 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) by water.

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

Clements learn from Flood's assertion to investigators that he felt like as soon as he was within the water, he couldn't turn around as a result of he may not see the sting of the freeway and was fearful about working right into a ditch hidden by the water.

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

Flood's lawyer said while it was a terrible tragedy, others were making an attempt to unfairly blame just the previous deputy instead of the tools issues, the troops that waived them around the barricades and supervisors who knew harmful flooding was beginning and despatched him though taking the women to the psychological health services was not an emergency.

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

Flood didn't testify, but earlier than he was sentenced instructed the choose he tried everything he might to keep the ladies calm as the waters rose and help was sluggish to reach.

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

Flood and the deputy with him, Joshua Bishop, had been eventually rescued from the highest 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 would not open. The delay in getting help was costly too. A firefighter testified they have been capable of lower the roof off the van and started working on the cage, however the water bought larger and quicker and it was too harmful to proceed.

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

“I can forgive, but I cannot forget. Luckily, I still bear in mind my mom as a happy girl, a joyful woman who beloved her family," he mentioned. “However you, Mr. Flood, will keep in mind my mom by listening to her screams behind that van."

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