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 seeking psychological health therapy trapped in a cage in the again 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 committed the day they died in September 2018, however their families stated they weren't violent. Newton was solely looking for medication for her concern and anxiousness and Green’s household mentioned she was committed to a psychological facility at a regular psychological well being appointment by a counselor she had never seen earlier than.

Flood, 69, was sentenced about half-hour after the verdict and after a number of kinfolk of the women stated his decision to press ahead with the shortest route left an impossible-to-fix gap of their lives.

“This was a deliberate act set in motion by a pompous, stubborn man,” Inexperienced's sister Donnela Inexperienced-Johnson advised the decide. “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 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, preventing the women 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, according to testimony from the trial streamed by WMBF-TV.

The deputies said they spoke to the ladies and tried to keep them calm for about an hour as the water kept rising earlier than it got too harmful and rescuers may no longer hear them.

“How terrible must which have been to sit down there and wait in your own dying?” Solicitor Ed Clements stated in his closing argument Thursday.

Whereas other factors like an emergency radio that didn't notify rescuers of the van's actual location contributed to the deaths, Clements said the drownings all got here out of Flood’s reckless choice to drive 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) by water.

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

Clements read from Flood's assertion to investigators that he felt like once he was in the water, he couldn't turn round because he may no longer see the sting of the freeway and was frightened about working right into a ditch hidden by the water.

“Perhaps it wounded his pride or stubbornness. I don’t know. He pushed ahead into water that was not just standing in a tall puddle, but it was speeding, 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 had been attempting to unfairly blame simply the previous deputy as a substitute of the tools issues, the troops that waived them around the barricades and supervisors who knew dangerous flooding was beginning and despatched him even though taking the ladies to the psychological health facilities was not an emergency.

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

Flood did not testify, but earlier than he was sentenced advised the decide he tried everything he may to maintain the ladies calm because the waters rose and help was sluggish to arrive.

“It was a sequence of mistakes on my half and other those that led me to that time and I’m sorry for what happened to the ladies,” Flood said.

Flood and the deputy with him, Joshua Bishop, were finally rescued from the top 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, nevertheless it still wouldn't open. The delay in getting assist was costly too. A firefighter testified they had been capable of cut the roof off the van and started engaged on the cage, however the water got higher and quicker 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 value.

“I can forgive, however I cannot neglect. Luckily, I nonetheless keep in mind my mother as a happy lady, a joyful woman who liked her family," he mentioned. “However you, Mr. Flood, will bear in mind my mother by hearing her screams at the back of that van."

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