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 girls searching for mental health treatment trapped in a cage in the back was sentenced Thursday to 18 years in jail.

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 dedicated the day they died in September 2018, however their households said they were not violent. Newton was solely in search of medication for her concern and anxiousness and Green’s household stated she was committed to a psychological facility at an everyday psychological health appointment by a counselor she had never seen earlier than.

Flood, 69, was sentenced about 30 minutes after the decision and after several family of the women stated his determination 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,” Inexperienced's sister Donnela Inexperienced-Johnson told the choose. “He abused the belief my sister, Nikki, Wendy and the state of South Carolina entrusted him with. And for what? To avoid wasting time.”

Circuit Court Judge William Seales sentenced Flood to 5 years in jail on every involuntary manslaughter cost and four years on each reckless murder cost 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 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 maintain them calm for about an hour because the water stored rising before it bought too harmful and rescuers might no longer hear them.

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

Whereas different factors like an emergency radio that did not notify rescuers of the van's actual location contributed to the deaths, Clements stated the drownings all came out of Flood’s reckless decision to drive 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) via water.

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

Clements learn from Flood's statement to investigators that he felt like once he was in the water, he could not turn round as a result of he might not see the sting of the freeway and was frightened about working 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 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 mentioned whereas it was a terrible tragedy, others have been trying to unfairly blame just the previous deputy as a substitute of the tools problems, the troops that waived them around the barricades and supervisors who knew harmful flooding was starting and despatched him regardless that taking the ladies to the mental well being services was not an emergency.

"I ask that you resist the urge to attempt to give justice to these two girls by giving injustice to this good man," defense attorney Jarrett Bouchette mentioned. “They need to make him a scapegoat for this accident.”

Flood didn't testify, but earlier than he was sentenced advised the choose he tried the whole lot he might to maintain the ladies calm as the waters rose and assist was sluggish to arrive.

“It was a sequence of errors on my half and different people that led me to that time and I’m sorry for what happened to the women,” Flood said.

Flood and the deputy with him, Joshua Bishop, have been 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, but it surely nonetheless would not open. The delay in getting help was expensive too. A firefighter testified they have been in a position to reduce the roof off the van and began working on the cage, however the water acquired greater and faster and it was too dangerous to continue.

Newton's son Charles stated he hated that Flood had to learn to comply with the principles and use common sense at such a steep price.

“I can forgive, but I can't overlook. Thankfully, I still remember my mother as a cheerful lady, a joyful girl who liked her household," he stated. “However you, Mr. Flood, will remember my mom by hearing her screams in the back of that van."

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