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 searching for psychological health treatment trapped in a cage within 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 homicide.

Judges ordered Wendy Newton, 45, and Nicolette Inexperienced, 43, to be involuntarily dedicated the day they died in September 2018, however their families said they were not violent. Newton was only in search of medication for her fear and anxiety and Inexperienced’s household stated she was dedicated to a mental facility at an everyday psychological well being appointment by a counselor she had by no means seen before.

Flood, 69, was sentenced about 30 minutes after the decision and after several family members of the ladies said his resolution to press ahead with the shortest route left an impossible-to-fix gap of their lives.

“This was a deliberate act set in movement by a pompous, cussed man,” Inexperienced's sister Donnela Green-Johnson advised 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 Decide William Seales sentenced Flood to five years in prison on each involuntary manslaughter charge and four years on each reckless murder charge 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 having 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 line with testimony from the trial streamed by WMBF-TV.

The deputies mentioned they spoke to the ladies and tried to maintain them calm for about an hour because the water stored rising before it received too harmful and rescuers may not hear them.

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

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

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

Clements read from Flood's assertion to investigators that he felt like once he was within the water, he couldn't turn around because he might now not see the edge of the freeway and was worried about operating into a ditch hidden by the water.

“Perhaps it wounded his delight 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 mentioned.

Flood's lawyer said while it was a terrible tragedy, others were attempting to unfairly blame just the previous deputy as a substitute of the gear issues, the troops that waived them around the barricades and supervisors who knew dangerous flooding was starting and sent him despite the fact that taking the ladies to the psychological health amenities was not an emergency.

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

Flood didn't testify, however earlier than he was sentenced instructed the choose he tried the whole lot he may to maintain the women calm because the waters rose and assist was slow to arrive.

“It was a series of mistakes on my part and different people 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, were ultimately rescued from the top of the transport van, authorities mentioned. 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 still wouldn't open. The delay in getting assist was costly too. A firefighter testified they have been in a position to reduce the roof off the van and began engaged on the cage, but the water received greater and sooner and it was too harmful to continue.

Newton's son Charles stated he hated that Flood needed to study to observe the foundations and use widespread sense at such a steep worth.

“I can forgive, but I can't forget. Fortuitously, I still keep in mind my mom as a happy girl, a joyful girl who beloved her family," he mentioned. “However you, Mr. Flood, will keep in mind my mom by listening to her screams behind that van."

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