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 women looking for mental health remedy trapped in a cage within the again was sentenced Thursday to 18 years in prison.

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

Judges ordered Wendy Newton, 45, and Nicolette Green, 43, to be involuntarily committed the day they died in September 2018, but their households mentioned they were not violent. Newton was solely looking for medicine for her fear and anxiousness and Green’s family said she was committed to a psychological facility at an everyday mental health appointment by a counselor she had never seen before.

Flood, 69, was sentenced about half-hour after the decision and after a number of kin of the women said his choice 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, 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 avoid wasting time.”

Circuit Court Decide William Seales sentenced Flood to five years in prison on every involuntary manslaughter charge 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 in opposition to a guardrail, preventing the ladies from with the ability 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, in line with testimony from the trial streamed by WMBF-TV.

The deputies mentioned they spoke to the women and tried to maintain them calm for about an hour as the water saved rising earlier than it got too dangerous and rescuers might no longer hear them.

“How awful should which were to sit down there and wait for your personal death?” 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 actual location contributed to the deaths, Clements said the drownings all came out of Flood’s reckless determination to drive 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) by way of water.

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

Clements learn from Flood's statement to investigators that he felt like as soon as he was within the water, he could not turn around as a result of he could not see the sting of the freeway and was anxious about running into a ditch hidden by the water.

“Maybe it wounded his delight or stubbornness. I don’t know. He pushed forward into water that was not simply standing in a tall puddle, but it was dashing, crossing the guardrail. All of it was the Little Pee Dee River by then,” Clements stated.

Flood's lawyer said whereas it was a terrible tragedy, others have been making an attempt to unfairly blame just the previous deputy instead of the tools issues, the troops that waived them around the barricades and supervisors who knew harmful flooding was beginning and sent him though taking the ladies to the mental well being services was not an emergency.

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

Flood did not testify, but before he was sentenced instructed the judge he tried all the pieces he might to keep the ladies calm because the waters rose and assist was slow to arrive.

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

Flood and the deputy with him, Joshua Bishop, have been finally rescued from the top of the transport van, authorities stated. 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 surely still wouldn't open. The delay in getting help was pricey too. A firefighter testified they have been capable of lower the roof off the van and began engaged on the cage, but the water received higher and quicker and it was too dangerous to proceed.

Newton's son Charles said he hated that Flood had to be taught to comply with the rules and use widespread sense at such a steep value.

“I can forgive, but I can't overlook. Fortunately, I still remember my mom as a happy girl, a joyful lady who liked her household," 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.