COLUMBIA, S.C. -- Two women drowned in the back of a locked cage while being taken for involuntary commitment to a mental hospital because the police van they were in took an unsafe route and rolled over and deputies lacked a key or bolt cutters to get them out, a lawyer for one of the women's families told South Carolina lawmakers Thursday.
The deputies, who drove around barricades and a manned checkpoint and ignored the safer route they had been given to avoid floodwaters from Hurricane Florence, bear responsibility for the deaths of Wendy Newton and Nicolette Green, said Tommy Brittain, a lawyer for Newton's family. They have been fired and a criminal investigation into their actions is coming to an end.
Neither woman was violent, their advocates said during a Senate subcommittee hearing Thursday. Newton was only seeking medicine for her fear and anxiety the day she died, the attorney said, while Green's family said she was committed at a regular mental health appointment by a councilor she had never seen before.
A system in South Carolina that treats nonviolent mental health patients more like criminals also contributed greatly to the women's deaths, Brittain told the state Senate panel.
Sheriff's offices don't like the system either because it too often pulls deputies off the street to take people who are safe enough to be transported by ambulances or other means, South Carolina Sheriff's Association Executive Director Jarrod Bruder said.
A survey of about a third of the state's counties showed 4,200 mental patients have been transported by officers so far this year. Hospitals and doctors often demand deputies to take patients even though the law allows family members or friends to take responsibility for patients who aren't immediate threats to themselves or the community.
The Senate subcommittee plans to keep hearing testimony as the General Assembly's session approaches in January. The three members agreed the law needs to be changed, and the Department of Mental Health may need more funds.
Democratic state Sen. Marlon Kimpson said he wanted to call the hearings as soon as possible after the September deaths because they were so horrible.