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 seeking mental well being therapy trapped in a cage in the back was sentenced Thursday to 18 years in prison.

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

Judges ordered Wendy Newton, 45, and Nicolette Inexperienced, 43, to be involuntarily committed the day they died in September 2018, however their households mentioned they weren't violent. Newton was solely looking for drugs for her fear and anxiousness and Inexperienced’s family said she was dedicated to a mental facility at an everyday psychological health appointment by a counselor she had by no means seen before.

Flood, 69, was sentenced about 30 minutes after the verdict and after several relations of the women stated his resolution to press forward with the shortest route left an impossible-to-fix hole in their lives.

“This was a deliberate act set in movement by a pompous, stubborn man,” Inexperienced's sister Donnela Inexperienced-Johnson advised the choose. “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 five years in prison on every involuntary manslaughter cost and 4 years on every 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 in opposition to a guardrail, preventing the women 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 accordance with testimony from the trial streamed by WMBF-TV.

The deputies said they spoke to the women and tried to maintain them calm for about an hour because the water stored rising before it received too harmful and rescuers could no longer hear them.

“How terrible should that have been to take a seat there and wait to 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 precise location contributed to the deaths, Clements mentioned 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. Highway 76 just outdoors Nichols, however Flood drove round them after briefly speaking 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 may now not see the edge of the freeway and was worried about working into a ditch hidden by the water.

“Maybe 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 dashing, crossing the guardrail. All of it was the Little Pee Dee River by then,” Clements said.

Flood's lawyer mentioned while it was a horrible tragedy, others were attempting to unfairly blame just 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 sent him even though taking the women to the mental well being services was not an emergency.

"I ask that you simply resist the urge to try to give justice to these two girls by giving injustice to this good man," protection legal professional Jarrett Bouchette mentioned. “They wish to make him a scapegoat for this accident.”

Flood did not testify, however earlier than he was sentenced advised the decide he tried the whole lot he may to keep the ladies calm because the waters rose and assist was sluggish to arrive.

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

Flood and the deputy with him, Joshua Bishop, had been finally rescued from the highest of the transport van, authorities stated. 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 nonetheless wouldn't open. The delay in getting help was expensive too. A firefighter testified they had been in a position to lower the roof off the van and began engaged on the cage, however the water obtained larger and faster and it was too dangerous to proceed.

Newton's son Charles stated he hated that Flood had to learn to comply with the principles and use frequent sense at such a steep value.

“I can forgive, but I cannot overlook. Fortuitously, I nonetheless bear in mind my mom as a happy woman, a joyful lady who liked her family," he stated. “But you, Mr. Flood, will keep in mind my mother by listening to her screams behind that van."

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