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 ladies in search of mental health treatment 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 committed the day they died in September 2018, but their families said they weren't violent. Newton was only searching for drugs for her fear and nervousness and Inexperienced’s family mentioned she was dedicated to a psychological facility at an everyday mental health appointment by a counselor she had never seen earlier than.

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

“This was a deliberate act set in movement by a pompous, cussed man,” Inexperienced's sister Donnela Green-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 save time.”

Circuit Court Judge William Seales sentenced Flood to 5 years in prison on every involuntary manslaughter charge and 4 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 in opposition to a guardrail, stopping 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 said they spoke to the women and tried to maintain them calm for about an hour as the water stored rising earlier than it acquired too dangerous and rescuers may not hear them.

“How awful must that have been to take a seat there and wait for your personal dying?” Solicitor Ed Clements said in his closing argument Thursday.

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

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

Clements read from Flood's assertion to investigators that he felt like once he was within the water, he couldn't turn round because he could no longer see the sting of the highway and was fearful about working into a ditch hidden by the water.

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

Flood's lawyer stated while it was a terrible tragedy, others had been attempting to unfairly blame simply the former deputy as a substitute of the gear issues, the troops that waived them across the barricades and supervisors who knew dangerous flooding was beginning and sent him even though taking the women to the mental well being services was not an emergency.

"I ask that you resist the urge to attempt to give justice to those two girls 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 advised the decide he tried the whole lot he could to maintain the ladies calm as the waters rose and assist was sluggish to arrive.

“It was a collection of errors on my part and other people 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, have been ultimately rescued from the highest of the transport van, authorities said. 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 nonetheless would not open. The delay in getting help was pricey too. A firefighter testified they were in a position to cut the roof off the van and began engaged on the cage, but the water obtained greater and faster and it was too dangerous to continue.

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

“I can forgive, but I cannot overlook. Luckily, I nonetheless bear in mind my mom as a cheerful woman, a joyful lady who beloved her household," he stated. “But you, Mr. Flood, will keep in mind my mom by listening to her screams in the back of that van."

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