Family of patient who drowned in a sheriff's van after Florence demand answers

[Borealis]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/2-mental-health-patients-drown-in-van-swept-away-by-florence-flood-waters

“We want answers. Why did the deputies drive through flooded waters?  What happened to ‘Turn Around. Don’t Drown?’” That’s a heartbroken woman’s question for the Horry County
Sheriff’s Office after learning her sister, 43-year-old Nicolette Green, was one of two female mental-health patients who drowned when a sheriff’s van transporting them in South
Carolina was swept away by rising floodwaters left in Hurricane Florence’s wake.

“Gross negligence has robbed two families of their loved ones. We want those who are responsible to be held accountable. These women were not inmates or criminals. They were
women who voluntarily sought help,” the family statement, obtained by the The Daily Beast through Nicolette’s sister, Jewels Green, said on Wednesday. “They trusted the hospitals and
the Sheriff Deputies with their lives and that trust was abused. We want answers.”

On Wednesday evening, the Horry County Sheriff’s Office announced that the bodies of Nicolette Green and Windy Newton, 45, had been recovered from the van and would be taken to
Charleston, South Carolina, for an autopsy.

The van, according to authorities, was carrying the two patients along with two deputies to the city of Darlington around 5:30 p.m. when the rising waters flooded the vehicle.“This is a
tragedy,” Green’s mother said to The Daily Beast, declining to speak more about her daughter. “I can’t believe this has happened.”

The river, which has been assigned “major flood” status, is one of the bodies of water state officials are closely monitoring following Florence, Horry County Sheriff’s Office
spokeswoman Brooke Holden told The Daily Beast.

Original reports characterized the two women as “detainees,” but Holden clarified they were patients at nearby mental hospitals. At the time of the incident, officials said, Green and
Newton were being transported from their coastal hospitals to a behavioral center farther inland for safety reasons.

Marion County Coroner Jerry Richardson told The Daily Beast that the van, while trying to cross rapidly rising waters, was carried off the road. “The water is deep, fast, and
contaminated,” he said. “They were trying to negotiate with it and it just didn’t work out.”

In a Facebook post, Jewels Green said her sister was a mother of four and had suffered from “depression for the last 20+ years of her life.” Her son Otto passed away recently from
bone cancer, Green added. “She was seeking help. She trusted people and they killed her,” Jewels Green wrote in a tribute post. “Our only comfort is that we know she is in Heaven with
her son and that she is now at peace.”

The deputies were able to escape from the van but were unsuccessful in trying to extricate the women, officials said. Once rescue teams retrieved the two deputies from atop the
sunken van, and they were transported to a nearby hospital and have since been placed on administrative leave. That hospital, Richardson said, is now too difficult for authorities to
reach because “the flooding is too high.”

The women’s deaths bring Hurricane Florence’s tally to at least 37 killed since the powerful storm made landfall—with most of the devastation in North Carolina.