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 girls searching for mental well being remedy trapped in a cage in the again was sentenced Thursday to 18 years in jail.

A Marion County jury discovered 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 Green, 43, to be involuntarily committed the day they died in September 2018, but their families mentioned they were not violent. Newton was only looking for drugs for her concern and nervousness and Green’s family mentioned she was dedicated to a mental facility at an everyday psychological well being appointment by a counselor she had never seen before.

Flood, 69, was sentenced about half-hour after the verdict and after several relatives of the women stated his determination 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,” Green's sister Donnela Green-Johnson instructed 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 Courtroom Choose William Seales sentenced Flood to five years in prison on each involuntary manslaughter cost and four years on each reckless murder cost 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 being able 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 mentioned they spoke to the ladies and tried to keep them calm for about an hour because the water stored rising earlier than it received too harmful and rescuers might now not hear them.

“How awful should that have been to sit there and wait to your own dying?” Solicitor Ed Clements mentioned in his closing argument Thursday.

Whereas different factors like an emergency radio that failed to notify rescuers of the van's exact location contributed to the deaths, Clements stated the drownings all got here out of Flood’s reckless determination to drive 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) by water.

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

Clements learn from Flood's assertion to investigators that he felt like as soon as he was in the water, he could not turn around because he might now not see the edge of the highway and was apprehensive about working into a ditch hidden by the water.

“Maybe it wounded his pleasure or stubbornness. I don’t know. He pushed ahead into water that was not just standing in a tall puddle, nevertheless it was speeding, crossing the guardrail. All of it was the Little Pee Dee River by then,” Clements mentioned.

Flood's lawyer stated while it was a horrible tragedy, others had been attempting to unfairly blame just the former deputy instead of the equipment issues, the troops that waived them around the barricades and supervisors who knew harmful flooding was starting and despatched him even though taking the women to the psychological health services 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 lawyer Jarrett Bouchette mentioned. “They wish to make him a scapegoat for this accident.”

Flood didn't testify, but before he was sentenced instructed the choose he tried all the pieces he could to maintain the women calm as the waters rose and help was slow to reach.

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

Flood and the deputy with him, Joshua Bishop, had been ultimately rescued from the top 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, nevertheless it nonetheless wouldn't open. The delay in getting help was pricey too. A firefighter testified they were capable of minimize the roof off the van and began engaged on the cage, but the water received increased and sooner and it was too harmful to continue.

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

“I can forgive, but I can't neglect. Luckily, I still keep in mind my mom as a cheerful woman, a joyful lady who beloved her household," he stated. “However you, Mr. Flood, will remember my mom by hearing her screams behind that van."

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