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 girls in search of psychological well being therapy trapped in a cage within the back was sentenced Thursday to 18 years in prison.

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 Green, 43, to be involuntarily dedicated the day they died in September 2018, but their households mentioned they were not violent. Newton was solely searching for medicine for her worry and nervousness and Green’s family said she was dedicated to a psychological facility at a regular psychological health appointment by a counselor she had by no means seen before.

Flood, 69, was sentenced about half-hour after the decision and after several kinfolk of the women stated his choice to press forward with the shortest route left an impossible-to-fix gap in their lives.

“This was a deliberate act set in movement by a pompous, cussed 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 Courtroom Judge William Seales sentenced Flood to 5 years in jail on every involuntary manslaughter cost and 4 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 towards 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 keeping with 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 obtained too harmful and rescuers may not hear them.

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

While other elements like an emergency radio that did not notify rescuers of the van's precise location contributed to the deaths, Clements mentioned the drownings all got here out of Flood’s reckless determination to drive 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) via water.

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

Clements learn from Flood's statement to investigators that he felt like once he was in the water, he could not flip around because he could now not see the edge of the freeway and was nervous about operating right into a ditch hidden by the water.

“Perhaps 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 rushing, crossing the guardrail. All of it was the Little Pee Dee River by then,” Clements said.

Flood's lawyer stated whereas it was a horrible tragedy, others were trying to unfairly blame just the previous deputy as a substitute of the tools problems, the troops that waived them across the barricades and supervisors who knew harmful flooding was starting and sent him regardless that taking the women to the psychological health facilities was not an emergency.

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

Flood didn't testify, but before he was sentenced instructed the choose he tried all the pieces he could to maintain the women calm as the waters rose and assist was gradual to arrive.

“It was a collection of errors on my part and other people that led me to that time and I’m sorry for what happened to the ladies,” Flood stated.

Flood and the deputy with him, Joshua Bishop, were eventually rescued from the highest of the transport van, authorities mentioned. Bishop will stand trial for two counts of involuntary manslaughter at a later date.

They tried to shoot the locks off the second door, nevertheless it nonetheless wouldn't open. The delay in getting help was costly too. A firefighter testified they had been in a position to reduce the roof off the van and started engaged on the cage, but the water bought larger and quicker and it was too harmful to continue.

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

“I can forgive, but I can not neglect. Fortuitously, I still keep in mind my mother as a happy woman, a joyful woman who cherished her household," he stated. “However you, Mr. Flood, will remember my mother by hearing her screams at the back of that van."

———

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