Family of mental health patient who drowned after Hurricane Florence suing hospital
The family of one of the mental health patients who drowned in the back of a Horry County Sheriff van after Hurricane Florence is suing a local hospital over her involuntary commitment and transport.
Wendy Newton’s family filed a medical malpractice suit against McLeod-Loris Seacoast Hospital in Horry County Court on Thursday.
Newton and Nikki Green drowned in a van transporting them for treatment in the aftermath of Hurricane Florence when many roads were flooded. Two now-fired deputies drove the van around a barricade outside of Nichols and into floodwaters.
Rising waters swept the van off the road. The deputies escaped, but Newton and Green drowned in the back of the van as they waited for rescuers on Sept. 18, 2018.
Both of the victims’ families previously filed civil lawsuits in federal court against the sheriff’s office and others over the women’s deaths. The two deputies — Stephen Flood and Joshua Bishop — face criminal charges.
The lawsuit
Newton, who lived in Shallotte, North Carolina, suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and felt anxious as Hurricane Florence approached, the lawsuit states. She had hallucinations that a figure named “Penelope” was trying to harm her.
On Sept. 18, 2018, Newton arranged for herself to be taken from Chadbourn, North Carolina, near her mother’s house, to McLeod-Loris Seacoast Hospital. At the hospital, she was given medication and placed in the emergency department, according to the lawsuit.
Around 11:30 a.m., hospital staff ordered that Newton be involuntarily committed to a facility with a psychiatric bed. The facility was in Lancaster, about 135 miles west of Loris.
A doctor noted at 12:30 p.m. that Newton’s condition was not improving and that he would sign the commitment papers, according to medical records and the lawsuit. The hospital contacted a counselor who helped authorize Newton’s transport “despite the obvious perils associated therewith, including increasing floodwaters and road closures throughout the area,” the suit reads.
McLeod-Loris Seacoast Hospital contacted the Horry County Sheriff’s Office to transport Newton and was initially told it would not pick her up that day because of flooding, the lawsuit claims.
Investigators say a meeting occurred between officials with the Horry County Sheriff’s Office and deputies in which they talked about the transport and where the deputies were advised not to take a route through Nichols because of floodwaters. Lawyers for Flood and Bishop have denied that meeting happened.
Around 5:15 p.m., medical staff discharged Newton to the custody of the Sheriff’s Office.
Newton sat in the back of a Horry County Sheriff’s van along with Green. Green had been at another Horry County medical facility and was committed to psychiatric care in Darlington. The back of the van is a cage-like area that was padlocked.
The deadly accident
Neither woman was restrained as they were being transported.
Flood drove the van and Bishop was a passenger. The two took a route through Nichols and Highway 76. There, the deputies encountered a National Guard vehicle that blocked an impassable road. The two deputies spoke to the guardsman and drove around the barricade, investigators say.
About a mile further, the van was pushed off the road by rising waters and pinned against a guardrail. Flood could not escape at first because his window would not go all the way down, he told investigators. Bishop freed himself and went to the back of the van and tried to free the women. He also tried to shoot the padlock off, but his efforts were unsuccessful.
Bishop went back to the front of the van and helped free Flood by pulling him through the partially rolled-down window, he told state investigators.
The two deputies waited on top of the van as the waters continued to rise and rescue crews from Marion and Horry counties tried to find the van and navigate the rushing waters. Newton and Green were locked in the van and drowned before crews could free them.
It took more than a day until their bodies could be recovered.
Legal filing
The latest legal filing says the hospital and medical staff — all of whom were named as defendants in the notice of medical malpractice lawsuit— were negligent in transporting Newton.
As a result of the hospital’s actions, Newton “died a slow and horrific death crammed inside a tiny metal cage with another woman whom she did not know as they helplessly watched the floodwaters rise inside their compartment,” the suit reads.
Officials from McLeod Hospital said they do not comment on pending lawsuits. The lawsuit asks for an unspecified amount of money for the “severe grief, sorrow and mental anguish” the family faced, as well as damages such as funeral expenses.
