This fell off the page in just a couple hours, but those two women are still dead and nothing I have read makes me think that anyone will be held to account. It’s hard to read some things, and hard to write about them. I’m still angry and frustrated.
I am hoping that someone close to the scene has heard some news from the County. Did the women have relatives, or any kind of advocate? Is there an investigation planned? How has the local media treated this?
National news is vital but these women deserve our attention.
So:
Two women being transported by deputies in Horry County were drowned when a van was driven into flood waters. The deputies driving escaped… or, as the news accounts say, “were rescued”. The women were chained up in the van and the deputies “could not get the door open”.
My first and lasting impulse was to condemn the men. At best they showed criminally negligent judgement and at worst what the law calls “depraved indifference”.
Once again officers of the law are alive and free, and two of the most deprived people in our society- the imprisoned mentally ill are dead. Is that a fair thing to say? Well?
Windy Newton and Nicollette Green are never going to have people march in the streets on their behalf, and they will probably be forgotten. Someone called people like them “Throwaway people”.
I’m so angry… again… I suppose someone will say the officers “feared for their lives”- in fact, that is what the County Sherriff inferred as he described how the two were rescued. By our heroic brothers in blue I suppose.
Maybe some nice person here will tell me why I should stop grinding my teeth in anger and despair.
I’m going from anger and vengeful hatred to sadness now.
