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 in the aftermath of Hurricane Florence, drowning two women in search of psychological well being remedy trapped in a cage within the again was sentenced Thursday to 18 years in jail.

A Marion County jury discovered former Horry County deputy Stephen Flood guilty of two counts of involuntary manslaughter and two counts of reckless homicide.

Judges ordered Wendy Newton, 45, and Nicolette Green, 43, to be involuntarily dedicated the day they died in September 2018, however their families mentioned they weren't violent. Newton was solely seeking medication for her worry and anxiety and Inexperienced’s household said she was dedicated to a mental facility at a regular 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 of the ladies said his resolution to press ahead with the shortest route left an impossible-to-fix hole in their lives.

“This was a deliberate act set in motion by a pompous, stubborn man,” Green's sister Donnela Green-Johnson instructed 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 Courtroom Decide William Seales sentenced Flood to five years in jail on every involuntary manslaughter cost and 4 years on each 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 against a guardrail, stopping the women 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, according to testimony from the trial streamed by WMBF-TV.

The deputies stated 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 may not hear them.

“How awful must that have been to sit there and wait on your personal loss of life?” Solicitor Ed Clements stated in his closing argument Thursday.

While different components like an emergency radio that failed to notify rescuers of the van's exact location contributed to the deaths, Clements mentioned the drownings all came out of Flood’s reckless resolution to drive 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) through water.

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

Clements read from Flood's assertion to investigators that he felt like once he was within the water, he couldn't flip around because he could no longer see the sting of the highway and was nervous about running into a ditch hidden by the water.

“Possibly it wounded his pride or stubbornness. I don’t know. He pushed ahead into water that was not simply standing in a tall puddle, but it was rushing, 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 had been trying to unfairly blame simply the previous deputy as an alternative of the tools problems, the troops that waived them around the barricades and supervisors who knew harmful flooding was starting and sent him although taking the ladies to the mental health services was not an emergency.

"I ask that you just resist the urge to try to give justice to these two girls 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 informed the judge he tried every thing he might to keep the ladies calm because the waters rose and assist was sluggish to arrive.

“It was a sequence of mistakes on my part and other those that led me to that time and I’m sorry for what occurred to the women,” Flood stated.

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 two counts of involuntary manslaughter at a later date.

They tried to shoot the locks off the second door, but it nonetheless would not open. The delay in getting help was costly too. A firefighter testified they have been in a position to cut the roof off the van and started working on the cage, however the water received greater and sooner and it was too harmful to proceed.

Newton's son Charles said he hated that Flood needed to learn to comply with the rules and use widespread sense at such a steep worth.

“I can forgive, however I can't neglect. Fortuitously, I still remember my mother as a cheerful girl, a joyful girl who beloved her family," he said. “However you, Mr. Flood, will keep in mind my mother by listening to her screams at the back of that van."

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