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 searching for mental health therapy 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 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 stated they were not violent. Newton was solely seeking drugs for her fear and nervousness and Inexperienced’s family stated she was committed to a mental facility at a daily mental well being appointment by a counselor she had never seen earlier than.

Flood, 69, was sentenced about 30 minutes after the decision and after a number of relatives of the women mentioned his decision 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 instructed the choose. “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 docket Judge William Seales sentenced Flood to five years in prison on each involuntary manslaughter charge and four 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 towards a guardrail, preventing the ladies from having 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 response to testimony from the trial streamed by WMBF-TV.

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

“How awful should which have been to sit down there and wait to your own loss of life?” Solicitor Ed Clements mentioned in his closing argument Thursday.

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

National guard troops put up barricades on U.S. Highway 76 just exterior Nichols, however Flood drove around them after briefly talking to the troopers.

Clements learn from Flood's assertion to investigators that he felt like once he was in the water, he could not turn round because he might not see the edge of the freeway and was anxious about operating into a ditch hidden by the water.

“Perhaps it wounded his pleasure or stubbornness. I don’t know. He pushed forward into water that was not just standing in a tall puddle, however it was rushing, crossing the guardrail. All of it was the Little Pee Dee River by then,” Clements mentioned.

Flood's lawyer stated whereas it was a terrible tragedy, others had been attempting to unfairly blame simply the previous deputy instead of the tools issues, the troops that waived them across the barricades and supervisors who knew harmful flooding was starting and sent him regardless that taking the ladies to the mental health amenities was not an emergency.

"I ask that you resist the urge to try to give justice to those two women by giving injustice to this good man," protection attorney Jarrett Bouchette mentioned. “They want to make him a scapegoat for this accident.”

Flood didn't testify, but before he was sentenced informed the decide he tried every thing he could to maintain the women calm as the waters rose and assist was gradual to arrive.

“It was a sequence of errors on my half and other those who led me to that time and I’m sorry for what occurred to the ladies,” Flood said.

Flood and the deputy with him, Joshua Bishop, were ultimately rescued from the highest 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, but it surely nonetheless wouldn't open. The delay in getting assist was expensive too. A firefighter testified they have been in a position to minimize the roof off the van and began working on the cage, however the water got larger and faster and it was too dangerous to continue.

Newton's son Charles stated he hated that Flood needed to be taught to observe the rules and use frequent sense at such a steep value.

“I can forgive, however I can't overlook. Luckily, I nonetheless keep in mind my mother as a contented woman, a joyful woman who loved her family," he said. “But you, Mr. Flood, will remember my mother by listening to her screams at the back of that van."

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