A US Coast Guard vessel is seen next to a barge that hit a sailboat that sank off Miami Beach’s Hibiscus Island in Biscayne Bay Monday morning, July 28, 2025. Five children and a camp counselor were aboard the sailboat, part of a Miami Yacht Club summer camp. Three of the girl capers died from the collision.
Pedro Portal
pportal@miamiherald.com
The captain of the tugboat pushing a large construction barge that crashed into a sailboat full of summer campers, killing three young girls last summer, has been charged with their deaths.
Yusiel Lopez Insua, 46, was charged with seaman’s manslaughter for operating the barge with obstructed visibility and without assigning a proper lookout, according to a document filed in Miami federal court Tuesday. He faces 10 years in prison if convicted. U.S. Coast Guard investigators in October had recommended the charge.
Prosecutors also said in the charging document that Insua’s cellphone was unlocked in the wheelhouse, and he was “on internet marketplaces, including at the time the collision occurred,” the document states. Prosecutors said Insua’s view was obstructed by the cargo, a deckhouse and crane on the barge.
Mila Yankelevich, 7, Erin Victoria Ko Han, 13, and Arielle ‘Ari’ Mazi Buchman, 10, were trapped beneath the barge tangled in the wreckage of the 17-foot Hobie Getaway sailboat after the crash, and they died from drowning.
READ MORE: ‘We were screaming and screaming.’ Witnesses watch as barge hits sailboat of campers
An Instagram post celebrating Mila Yankelevich by her grandmother Cristina Morena, a well-known Argentine TV producer. Mila, 7, was one of three Miami Yacht Club campers who died when a barge slammed into their sailboat in Biscayne Bay last summer. Instagram
A 19-year-old camp counselor, and two other girls, ages 7 and 8, were also on the sailboat, but survived. The five girls were attending sailboat camp at the Miami Yacht Club at the time of the deadly crash, which happened around 11 a.m. July 28.
Both young girls who survived were seriously injured. One of them, 7-year-old Calena Areyan Gruber, was trapped underneath the barge, but managed to swim to safety.
Justin B. Shapiro, an attorney representing the Gruber family, said the move to seek criminal charges was a “meaningful step toward justice.”
The Ko family declined to comment when reached by the Herald on Wednesday but say they are allowing the prosecution to take its process.
READ MORE: ‘It’s a miracle she’s alive.’ Girl injured in boat crash was trapped under barge
It was not immediately clear Tuesday whether Insua had been arrested.
His attorney, Walter A. Reynoso, released a statement to NBC 6 South Florida saying that Insua “intends to accept responsibility for his conduct and to resolve the case in a way that avoids causing the families any further unnecessary pain or anguish.”
“Our client remains deeply saddened by the tragic boating accident that resulted in the loss of three young lives,” Reynoso said. “He extends his heartfelt condolences to the families and loved ones of the victims, while recognizing that no words can lessen the pain caused by this terrible tragedy.”
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Erin Victoria Ko Han, 13, one of the three girls who died when a barge, being pushed by a tugboat captain, slammed into a Miami Yacht Club sailboat in July 2025 off Miami Beach. Courtesy of the Ko family. Tugboat captain had other ‘near misses,’ prosecutors say
According to the charging document, Insua was operating a 25-foot tugboat pushing a 108-foot-long, 149-gross ton construction barge. They were part of a crew disassembling a seawall at a home on Star Island, the document states.
The barge was hauling concrete debris to an empty lot on Di Lido Island in Miami Beach across the bay.
Prosecutors said that the area of Biscayne Bay the tug was transitting was known to be busy with sailboats and that Insua had several “near misses” in the days prior to the collision.
Ari Buchman, 10, had been dancing at Mady’s Dance Factory for nearly two years before she died after a barge slammed into a Miami Yacht Club sailboat in Biscayne Bay off Miami Beach on July 28, 2025. No lookout on barge: feds
There were two crewmen on the barge, and neither was assigned as a lookout, prosecutors said.
The charging document also states the sailboat lost wind propulsion, and Insua did not reverse course or slow down before crashing into the small boat. Prosecutors also said the counselor, who was operating the sailboat, stood up and tried to alert the tug captain that her craft was in the barge’s path.
The parents of the three girls who died sued Waterfront Construction, the Miami company that owns the tug and barge. The owner of the company, Jorge Rivas, has not been charged in the crash.
READ MORE: Parents of three girls who died in barge-sailboat crash sue barge company
The sailboat was among the first boats to leave the Miami Yacht Club’s dock near the MacArthur Causeway and head east in Biscayne Bay toward Hibiscus Island in Miami Beach that morning, the suit says. The weather was clear and the water calm on that Monday morning, but the barge “made no attempts to slow down or change its course,” the lawsuit alleges.
Judd Rosen, an attorney representing the family of the other girl who survived but was seriously injured, applauded the charge when reached Tuesday.
“A commercial tug captain has to pay attention and keep his eyes on the water. One criminal act of carelessness has ruined the lives of innocent families,” Rosen said. His clients do not have pending lawsuit against the company.
“Although we can’t change the past, justice can help bring comfort to the suffering,” he said.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
This story was originally published March 31, 2026 at 4:49 PM.
Miami Herald
David Goodhue covers the Florida Keys and South Florida for FLKeysNews.com and the Miami Herald. Before joining the Herald, he covered Congress, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy in Washington, D.C. He is a graduate of the University of Delaware.