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 in search of mental health remedy trapped in a cage in the back 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 murder.

Judges ordered Wendy Newton, 45, and Nicolette Inexperienced, 43, to be involuntarily dedicated the day they died in September 2018, but their families said they weren't violent. Newton was only looking for medication for her fear and nervousness and Inexperienced’s household mentioned she was committed to a psychological facility at a regular psychological well being appointment by a counselor she had by no means seen before.

Flood, 69, was sentenced about 30 minutes after the verdict and after several family members of the women stated 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 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 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 in opposition to a guardrail, stopping the ladies 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 response to 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 because the water stored rising before it received too harmful and rescuers might no longer hear them.

“How awful must which were to sit there and wait on your own demise?” 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 exact location contributed to the deaths, Clements stated the drownings all got here out of Flood’s reckless choice to drive 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) by way of water.

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

Clements learn from Flood's statement to investigators that he felt like once he was in the water, he couldn't turn round because he might no longer see the sting of the highway and was apprehensive about working right into a ditch hidden by the water.

“Possibly 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 speeding, crossing the guardrail. All of it was the Little Pee Dee River by then,” Clements stated.

Flood's lawyer mentioned whereas it was a horrible tragedy, others had been making an attempt to unfairly blame just the previous deputy as a substitute of the gear problems, the troops that waived them around the barricades and supervisors who knew harmful flooding was starting and despatched him although taking the ladies to the mental well being facilities was not an emergency.

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

Flood did not testify, but earlier than he was sentenced instructed the decide he tried every little thing he may to maintain the women calm as the waters rose and assist was slow to arrive.

“It was a collection of mistakes on my part and other folks that led me to that point and I’m sorry for what occurred to the girls,” Flood said.

Flood and the deputy with him, Joshua Bishop, were ultimately 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, but it surely still would not open. The delay in getting help was expensive too. A firefighter testified they had been able to cut the roof off the van and began engaged on the cage, but the water acquired increased and faster and it was too harmful to proceed.

Newton's son Charles said he hated that Flood needed to learn to comply with the principles and use common sense at such a steep value.

“I can forgive, but I can't neglect. Fortuitously, I still keep in mind my mother as a cheerful lady, a joyful girl who loved her household," he stated. “However you, Mr. Flood, will remember my mother by listening to her screams at the back of that van."

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