Two women being transported by sheriff’s deputies to a mental health facility drowned Tuesday in South Carolina when the van they were riding in was overcome by floodwaters. The two sheriff’s deputies in the vehicle survived. Forty-five-year-old Wendy Newton and 43-year-old Nicolette Green are two of at least 37 people killed by Hurricane Florence since the storm made landfall. Both women had gone to hospitals Tuesday morning when they were involuntarily committed and detained. Less than 24 hours later, they were dead. “There are a lot of questions remaining about why this had to occur, then, why there couldn’t have been some sort of an emergency delay,” says Meg Kinnard, South Carolina correspondent for the Associated Press, who has been following the story closely.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, Democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman with Nermeen Shaikh.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: We go now to South Carolina, where two women who were being transported by sheriff’s deputies to a mental health facility drowned Tuesday when the van they were riding in was overcome by floodwaters. The two sheriff’s deputies in the vehicle survived. 45-year-old Windy Newton and 43-year-old Nicolette Green are two of at least 37 people killed by Hurricane Florence since the storm made landfall. Both women had gone to hospitals Tuesday morning when they were involuntarily committed and detained. Less than 24 hours later, they were dead.
News reports originally called the women detainees and said they had been shackled to the back of the van when they drowned in the rising waters in Marion County, South Carolina, near the Little Pee Dee River. Authorities are now saying they were mental health patients and the women were not handcuffed.
AMY GOODMAN: Family members are demanding to know why the two women were transported through dangerous floodwaters and how exactly they died. Windy…