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

A Marion County jury found 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, but their households said they were not violent. Newton was only seeking medication for her concern and anxiety and Green’s family said she was committed to a mental facility at a daily psychological health appointment by a counselor she had by no means seen earlier than.

Flood, 69, was sentenced about half-hour after the decision and after a number of relations of the ladies mentioned his resolution to press forward with the shortest route left an impossible-to-fix gap of their lives.

“This was a deliberate act set in movement by a pompous, stubborn man,” Inexperienced's sister Donnela Green-Johnson advised the judge. “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 docket Choose William Seales sentenced Flood to 5 years in prison on each involuntary manslaughter charge and four years on every 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, 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, in keeping with 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 as the water saved rising before it received too harmful and rescuers may now not hear them.

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

While different elements 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.

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

Clements learn from Flood's statement to investigators that he felt like once he was within the water, he couldn't flip around because he might not see the edge of the freeway and was fearful about working into a ditch hidden by the water.

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

Flood's lawyer said while it was a horrible tragedy, others have been making an attempt to unfairly blame just the previous deputy as an alternative of the gear problems, the troops that waived them around the barricades and supervisors who knew harmful flooding was beginning and sent him even though taking the ladies to the mental health facilities was not an emergency.

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

Flood did not testify, however before he was sentenced informed the judge he tried every part he could to keep the women calm because the waters rose and help was slow to reach.

“It was a series of errors on my part and different folks that led me to that point and I’m sorry for what happened to the girls,” Flood mentioned.

Flood and the deputy with him, Joshua Bishop, have been eventually rescued from the highest of the transport van, authorities mentioned. 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 still would not open. The delay in getting help was expensive too. A firefighter testified they were in a position to minimize the roof off the van and began working on the cage, however the water acquired increased and faster and it was too dangerous to continue.

Newton's son Charles stated he hated that Flood needed to study to comply with the foundations and use widespread sense at such a steep price.

“I can forgive, however I cannot forget. Luckily, I still remember my mother as a cheerful woman, a joyful woman who loved her household," he stated. “However you, Mr. Flood, will bear in mind my mother by hearing her screams behind that van."

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