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 in the aftermath of Hurricane Florence, drowning two girls seeking mental well being remedy trapped in a cage within the again was sentenced Thursday to 18 years in prison.

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 Inexperienced, 43, to be involuntarily committed the day they died in September 2018, however their households stated they were not violent. Newton was only searching for medication for her concern and nervousness and Inexperienced’s household said she was dedicated to a psychological facility at an everyday psychological health appointment by a counselor she had by no means seen before.

Flood, 69, was sentenced about half-hour after the verdict and after several family members of the women mentioned his choice 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 instructed the decide. “He abused the trust my sister, Nikki, Wendy and the state of South Carolina entrusted him with. And for what? To avoid wasting time.”

Circuit Court Decide William Seales sentenced Flood to five years in prison on each involuntary manslaughter charge 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 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 did not have a key to a second door and there was no emergency escape hatch, in keeping with testimony from the trial streamed by WMBF-TV.

The deputies mentioned they spoke to the women and tried to keep them calm for about an hour because the water kept rising earlier than it received too harmful and rescuers might no longer hear them.

“How terrible should that have been to sit there and wait in your own loss of life?” Solicitor Ed Clements said in his closing argument Thursday.

Whereas different elements like an emergency radio that didn't notify rescuers of the van's exact location contributed to the deaths, Clements said the drownings all came 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 round them after briefly speaking to the troopers.

Clements learn from Flood's statement to investigators that he felt like as soon as he was in the water, he could not turn round as a result of he might not see the edge of the freeway and was frightened about operating right into a ditch hidden by the water.

“Possibly it wounded his pleasure 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 mentioned.

Flood's lawyer mentioned whereas it was a terrible tragedy, others have been trying to unfairly blame simply the previous deputy as a substitute of the tools problems, the troops that waived them across the barricades and supervisors who knew dangerous flooding was starting and despatched him though taking the women to the mental health services was not an emergency.

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

Flood didn't testify, but before he was sentenced told the decide he tried every part he may to maintain the women calm because the waters rose and help was slow to arrive.

“It was a collection of errors 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, had been ultimately rescued from the top of the transport van, authorities said. 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 nonetheless wouldn't open. The delay in getting help was pricey too. A firefighter testified they were 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 mentioned he hated that Flood had to learn to follow the rules and use frequent sense at such a steep value.

“I can forgive, but I can not neglect. Happily, I still bear in mind my mom as a contented woman, a joyful girl who cherished her household," he stated. “However you, Mr. Flood, will keep in mind my mom by listening to her screams behind that van."

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