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 in the aftermath of Hurricane Florence, drowning two girls seeking mental well being therapy trapped in a cage within 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 Inexperienced, 43, to be involuntarily committed the day they died in September 2018, however their families said they were not violent. Newton was solely in search of medicine for her fear and anxiety and Inexperienced’s household said she was committed to a mental facility at a daily psychological health appointment by a counselor she had never seen earlier than.

Flood, 69, was sentenced about 30 minutes after the decision and after several family of the ladies mentioned his determination to press forward with the shortest route left an impossible-to-fix gap in their lives.

“This was a deliberate act set in motion by a pompous, cussed man,” Inexperienced's sister Donnela Inexperienced-Johnson instructed the choose. “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 Decide William Seales sentenced Flood to 5 years in jail on each involuntary manslaughter cost and four years on every 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 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 did not 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 said they spoke to the ladies and tried to keep them calm for about an hour because the water kept rising earlier than it obtained too dangerous and rescuers could not hear them.

“How terrible should which have been to sit there and wait in your own death?” Solicitor Ed Clements said in his closing argument Thursday.

Whereas other elements like an emergency radio that failed to notify rescuers of the van's precise 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.

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

Clements learn from Flood's statement to investigators that he felt like as soon as he was in the water, he could not turn round as a result of he might no longer see the sting of the freeway and was anxious about operating into a ditch hidden by the water.

“Perhaps it wounded his pleasure 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 mentioned.

Flood's lawyer said whereas it was a terrible tragedy, others were attempting to unfairly blame just the former deputy as a substitute of the gear issues, the troops that waived them around the barricades and supervisors who knew dangerous flooding was beginning and despatched him despite the fact that taking the ladies to the psychological well being services was not an emergency.

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

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

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

Flood and the deputy with him, Joshua Bishop, were finally rescued from the highest 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, nevertheless it still would not open. The delay in getting assist was expensive too. A firefighter testified they had been capable of lower the roof off the van and began engaged on the cage, but the water acquired increased and faster and it was too harmful to continue.

Newton's son Charles stated he hated that Flood had to learn to observe the rules and use frequent sense at such a steep value.

“I can forgive, but I cannot forget. Fortunately, I still remember my mom as a happy lady, a joyful woman who liked her family," he mentioned. “But you, Mr. Flood, will bear in mind 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.