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 women searching for 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 homicide.

Judges ordered Wendy Newton, 45, and Nicolette Green, 43, to be involuntarily committed the day they died in September 2018, however their families stated they weren't violent. Newton was solely looking for medication for her fear and anxiety and Inexperienced’s household mentioned she was committed to a psychological facility at a daily psychological health appointment by a counselor she had never seen before.

Flood, 69, was sentenced about 30 minutes after the verdict and after a number of relations of the ladies mentioned his determination to press ahead 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,” Green's sister Donnela Green-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 lots of time.”

Circuit Court Decide William Seales sentenced Flood to 5 years in prison on each 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 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 did not 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 stored rising earlier than it obtained too harmful and rescuers might no longer hear them.

“How terrible should which have been to sit down there and wait in your personal death?” Solicitor Ed Clements said in his closing argument Thursday.

Whereas different components like an emergency radio that did not notify rescuers of the van's actual location contributed to the deaths, Clements mentioned the drownings all came out of Flood’s reckless resolution to drive 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) by means of water.

Nationwide guard troops put up barricades on U.S. Freeway 76 simply outdoors Nichols, but Flood drove round them after briefly talking 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 round as a result of he could not see the sting of the highway and was apprehensive about running into a ditch hidden by the water.

“Possibly 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 mentioned.

Flood's lawyer stated whereas it was a horrible tragedy, others were trying to unfairly blame just the previous deputy as a substitute of the gear problems, the troops that waived them around the barricades and supervisors who knew harmful flooding was starting and despatched him despite the fact that taking the women to the psychological health facilities was not an emergency.

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

Flood did not testify, but before he was sentenced informed the judge he tried all the pieces he might to keep the ladies calm because the waters rose and help was gradual to arrive.

“It was a sequence of mistakes on my part and other folks that led me to that point and I’m sorry for what occurred to the women,” Flood stated.

Flood and the deputy with him, Joshua Bishop, have been finally rescued from the top of the transport van, authorities mentioned. Bishop will stand trial for two counts of involuntary manslaughter at a later date.

They tried to shoot the locks off the second door, nevertheless it nonetheless wouldn't open. The delay in getting help was expensive too. A firefighter testified they had been capable of reduce the roof off the van and began working on the cage, but the water received greater and quicker and it was too harmful to continue.

Newton's son Charles mentioned he hated that Flood needed to learn to follow the rules and use frequent sense at such a steep value.

“I can forgive, however I can not neglect. Fortunately, I nonetheless keep in mind my mom as a contented girl, a joyful woman who beloved her household," he mentioned. “But you, Mr. Flood, will keep in mind my mom by listening to her screams in the back of that van."

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