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 ladies in search of psychological well being treatment trapped in a cage in 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 murder.

Judges ordered Wendy Newton, 45, and Nicolette Inexperienced, 43, to be involuntarily committed the day they died in September 2018, but their households stated they were not violent. Newton was only in search of medicine for her fear and anxiety and Green’s family stated she was committed 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 30 minutes after the verdict and after a number of kin of the ladies mentioned 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,” Green's sister Donnela Inexperienced-Johnson told 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 5 years in prison on every involuntary manslaughter cost and 4 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 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 line with testimony from the trial streamed by WMBF-TV.

The deputies mentioned they spoke to the women and tried to keep them calm for about an hour because the water saved rising before it acquired too harmful and rescuers might now not hear them.

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

Whereas different components 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 resolution to drive 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) by water.

Nationwide guard troops put up barricades on U.S. Freeway 76 just outdoors 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 in the water, he couldn't flip round because he may now not see the sting of the highway and was fearful about working right into a ditch hidden by the water.

“Maybe it wounded his delight or stubbornness. I don’t know. He pushed ahead 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 said.

Flood's lawyer mentioned while it was a horrible tragedy, others were attempting to unfairly blame just the former deputy instead of the gear issues, the troops that waived them around the barricades and supervisors who knew harmful flooding was beginning and sent him despite the fact that taking the ladies to the psychological health amenities was not an emergency.

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

Flood did not testify, but before he was sentenced informed the decide he tried every little thing he might to keep the ladies calm as the waters rose and help was gradual to reach.

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

Flood and the deputy with him, Joshua Bishop, were eventually rescued from the highest 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, but it surely still would not open. The delay in getting assist was expensive too. A firefighter testified they were able to cut the roof off the van and began working on the cage, however the water acquired larger and quicker and it was too harmful to proceed.

Newton's son Charles mentioned he hated that Flood had to be taught to observe the principles and use widespread sense at such a steep price.

“I can forgive, however I cannot neglect. Fortuitously, I still remember my mom as a cheerful girl, a joyful woman who beloved her household," he stated. “However you, Mr. Flood, will remember my mother by listening to her screams behind that van."

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