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 within the aftermath of Hurricane Florence, drowning two ladies in search of psychological well being treatment 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 dedicated the day they died in September 2018, but their families stated they weren't violent. Newton was only in search of medicine for her fear and anxiousness and Green’s household mentioned she was committed to a psychological facility at a daily mental health appointment by a counselor she had never seen earlier than.

Flood, 69, was sentenced about 30 minutes after the decision and after several relatives of the ladies said his choice to press forward with the shortest route left an impossible-to-fix hole of their lives.

“This was a deliberate act set in movement by a pompous, stubborn man,” Green's sister Donnela Green-Johnson told the judge. “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 Judge William Seales sentenced Flood to five years in jail on every involuntary manslaughter cost and four 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 against 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 line 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 because the water kept rising before it obtained too dangerous and rescuers may not hear them.

“How terrible must which were to sit there and wait to your own death?” Solicitor Ed Clements mentioned in his closing argument Thursday.

While different factors like an emergency radio that failed to notify rescuers of the van's precise location contributed to the deaths, Clements stated the drownings all got here out of Flood’s reckless resolution to drive 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) through water.

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

Clements read from Flood's statement to investigators that he felt like once he was within the water, he could not flip around because he could not see the sting of the highway and was apprehensive 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, 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 were trying to unfairly blame just the previous deputy as an alternative of the gear problems, the troops that waived them across the barricades and supervisors who knew harmful flooding was beginning and sent him though taking the women to the mental well being facilities 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 legal professional Jarrett Bouchette mentioned. “They need to make him a scapegoat for this accident.”

Flood didn't testify, however before he was sentenced told the judge he tried everything he could to keep the women calm because the waters rose and assist was sluggish to reach.

“It was a collection of mistakes on my part and different people that 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 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, however it still would not open. The delay in getting help was expensive too. A firefighter testified they had been able to minimize the roof off the van and began working on the cage, however the water received higher and sooner and it was too dangerous to proceed.

Newton's son Charles stated he hated that Flood had to study to observe the foundations and use common sense at such a steep price.

“I can forgive, however I can not overlook. Luckily, I still bear in mind my mother as a happy girl, a joyful woman who liked her household," he said. “However you, Mr. Flood, will remember my mom by listening to her screams at the back of that van."

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