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 within the aftermath of Hurricane Florence, drowning two women in search of mental health therapy trapped in a cage within 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 murder.

Judges ordered Wendy Newton, 45, and Nicolette Green, 43, to be involuntarily dedicated the day they died in September 2018, but their households stated they were not violent. Newton was solely searching for medication for her worry and anxiety and Inexperienced’s family mentioned she was committed to a mental facility at a daily psychological well being appointment by a counselor she had by no means seen earlier than.

Flood, 69, was sentenced about half-hour after the verdict and after a number of kinfolk of the ladies mentioned 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 movement by a pompous, stubborn man,” Inexperienced's sister Donnela Green-Johnson told 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 charge and 4 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 towards a guardrail, preventing the women from being able 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 stated they spoke to the women and tried to maintain them calm for about an hour as the water saved rising before it acquired too dangerous and rescuers may now not hear them.

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

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

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

Clements learn from Flood's statement to investigators that he felt like once he was in the water, he couldn't flip around as a result of he might not see the edge of the highway and was frightened about operating right into a ditch hidden by the water.

“Maybe it wounded his satisfaction or stubbornness. I don’t know. He pushed ahead 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 mentioned.

Flood's lawyer stated while it was a terrible tragedy, others have been trying to unfairly blame simply the previous deputy as a substitute of the gear issues, the troops that waived them around the barricades and supervisors who knew dangerous flooding was starting and despatched him although taking the ladies to the psychological health amenities 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," protection attorney Jarrett Bouchette stated. “They wish to make him a scapegoat for this accident.”

Flood did not testify, however before he was sentenced advised the judge he tried the whole lot he could to keep the ladies calm because the waters rose and help was slow to reach.

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

Flood and the deputy with him, Joshua Bishop, have been ultimately 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, but it surely still would not open. The delay in getting assist was pricey too. A firefighter testified they were able to reduce the roof off the van and started engaged on the cage, however the water bought greater and sooner and it was too harmful to continue.

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

“I can forgive, but I can not forget. Fortuitously, I nonetheless bear in mind my mother as a cheerful girl, a joyful lady who beloved her family," he stated. “However you, Mr. Flood, will bear in mind my mom by listening to her screams in the back of that van."

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