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 women seeking mental well being remedy 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 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, but their families stated they were not violent. Newton was solely in search of drugs for her fear and nervousness and Inexperienced’s family mentioned she was committed to a mental facility at an everyday psychological health appointment by a counselor she had never seen before.

Flood, 69, was sentenced about 30 minutes after the verdict and after a number of kin of the ladies said his decision 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 Green-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 save lots of time.”

Circuit Courtroom Decide William Seales sentenced Flood to 5 years in jail on every involuntary manslaughter charge and four years on each 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 against a guardrail, stopping the women 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 accordance 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 saved rising before it acquired too harmful and rescuers might not hear them.

“How terrible should which were to sit there and wait in your personal dying?” Solicitor Ed Clements said in his closing argument Thursday.

While different components like an emergency radio that didn't notify rescuers of the van's exact 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 way of water.

Nationwide guard troops put up barricades on U.S. Freeway 76 simply outside Nichols, but Flood drove around them after briefly speaking to the soldiers.

Clements learn from Flood's statement to investigators that he felt like once he was in the water, he couldn't flip around because he could now not see the edge of the freeway and was anxious about working 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 stated while it was a terrible tragedy, others had been attempting to unfairly blame simply the previous deputy instead of the equipment issues, the troops that waived them around the barricades and supervisors who knew harmful flooding was beginning and sent him although taking the women to the mental well being services was not an emergency.

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

Flood did not testify, however earlier than he was sentenced advised the judge he tried everything he might to keep the ladies calm as the waters rose and help was gradual to reach.

“It was a collection of mistakes on my half and different those that led me to that time and I’m sorry for what happened to the girls,” Flood stated.

Flood and the deputy with him, Joshua Bishop, had been finally rescued from the top 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, nevertheless it still wouldn't open. The delay in getting help was expensive too. A firefighter testified they were capable of minimize the roof off the van and started engaged on the cage, however the water obtained higher and quicker and it was too dangerous to continue.

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

“I can forgive, but I can't overlook. Happily, I still remember my mother as a cheerful lady, a joyful girl who beloved her family," he stated. “But you, Mr. Flood, will keep in mind my mother by hearing her screams at the back of that van."

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