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 ladies seeking psychological well being treatment 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, but their households said they were not violent. Newton was solely looking for drugs for her concern and anxiousness and Green’s family stated she was committed to a mental facility at a regular psychological well being appointment by a counselor she had by no means seen earlier than.

Flood, 69, was sentenced about 30 minutes after the decision and after a number of kin of the women said his resolution to press forward with the shortest route left an impossible-to-fix hole of their lives.

“This was a deliberate act set in motion by a pompous, cussed man,” Inexperienced's sister Donnela Inexperienced-Johnson advised the judge. “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 docket Judge William Seales sentenced Flood to five years in jail on each involuntary manslaughter charge and 4 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 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 didn't 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 stated they spoke to the ladies and tried to keep them calm for about an hour as the water stored rising earlier than it got too harmful and rescuers could no longer hear them.

“How awful should which were to take a seat there and wait for your personal dying?” Solicitor Ed Clements mentioned in his closing argument Thursday.

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

National guard troops put up barricades on U.S. Freeway 76 simply exterior Nichols, however Flood drove round them after briefly speaking to the soldiers.

Clements learn from Flood's assertion to investigators that he felt like as soon as he was in the water, he could not turn round because he might not see the sting of the highway and was apprehensive about working right into a ditch hidden by the water.

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

Flood's lawyer mentioned while it was a terrible tragedy, others had been making an attempt to unfairly blame just the former deputy as an alternative of the tools issues, the troops that waived them around the barricades and supervisors who knew dangerous flooding was beginning and despatched him regardless that taking the women to the mental health services was not an emergency.

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

Flood did not testify, but earlier than he was sentenced informed the decide he tried every part he could to keep the ladies calm as the waters rose and assist was slow to reach.

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

Flood and the deputy with him, Joshua Bishop, had been eventually rescued from the highest 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 surely nonetheless would not open. The delay in getting help was pricey too. A firefighter testified they have been in a position to lower the roof off the van and started engaged on the cage, however the water received larger and faster and it was too dangerous to proceed.

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

“I can forgive, but I cannot overlook. Thankfully, I nonetheless keep in mind my mother as a contented woman, a joyful lady who liked her household," he stated. “However you, Mr. Flood, will remember my mom by hearing her screams in the back of that van."

———

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