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 girls seeking psychological well being remedy trapped in a cage within the again 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 Green, 43, to be involuntarily committed the day they died in September 2018, but their households said they were not violent. Newton was only seeking medicine for her worry and anxiety and Green’s household mentioned she was committed to a mental facility at a regular psychological health 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 family members of the women mentioned his choice to press ahead 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,” Inexperienced's sister Donnela Inexperienced-Johnson informed the decide. “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 Choose William Seales sentenced Flood to 5 years in prison on each involuntary manslaughter charge and four years on every reckless homicide 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, stopping 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, according to testimony from the trial streamed by WMBF-TV.

The deputies said they spoke to the ladies and tried to maintain them calm for about an hour because the water stored rising earlier than it got too dangerous and rescuers may now not hear them.

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

While other elements like an emergency radio that didn't notify rescuers of the van's actual location contributed to the deaths, Clements said 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. Highway 76 simply outside Nichols, but Flood drove round them after briefly speaking to the troopers.

Clements learn from Flood's assertion to investigators that he felt like as soon as he was within the water, he couldn't flip round as a result of he might now not see the sting of the highway and was apprehensive about operating 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 just standing in a tall puddle, nevertheless it was dashing, crossing the guardrail. All of it was the Little Pee Dee River by then,” Clements stated.

Flood's lawyer stated while it was a terrible tragedy, others were attempting to unfairly blame just the former deputy as a substitute of the gear problems, the troops that waived them around the barricades and supervisors who knew dangerous flooding was beginning and sent him despite the fact that taking the women to the psychological well being amenities was not an emergency.

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

Flood did not testify, however before he was sentenced told the decide he tried every thing he might to keep the ladies calm because the waters rose and assist was slow to arrive.

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

Flood and the deputy with him, Joshua Bishop, had been finally rescued from the highest of the transport van, authorities said. Bishop will stand trial for 2 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 expensive too. A firefighter testified they have been capable of minimize the roof off the van and began engaged on the cage, but the water obtained increased and faster and it was too dangerous to proceed.

Newton's son Charles said he hated that Flood needed to be taught to follow the foundations and use common sense at such a steep worth.

“I can forgive, however I cannot overlook. Happily, I still bear in mind my mother as a contented woman, a joyful girl who beloved her household," he said. “However you, Mr. Flood, will keep in mind my mom 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.