COLLEGE POINT, Queens (PIX11) — So many questions about why a 22-foot boat capsized in New York Harbor with 14 people on board. A mother and her five-month-old baby girl died.
As the Coast Guard and the NYPD continue to investigate, in the neighborhood where the mother and baby lived, there is only grief.
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“We have no words. It is just devastation,” Santina Wiggins, assistant manager of Marco Hotel and a friend of the woman who died, told PIX11 News. “Our hearts go out to Andres,” she added.
In the College Point neighborhood where the family lives and at the Flushing Hotel where the husband works, friends and coworkers are trying to process the unimaginable loss of a 27-year-old mother, Sara Sanchez, and her five-month-old baby girl.
Her husband, Andres Garcia, was also on board the boat when it capsized near Liberty Island late Saturday night.
The Coast Guard and the NYPD successfully rescued Garcia and 11 others, but his wife and daughter died later at a hospital.
“We’re setting up a fundraiser for him and his son because now he is a single dad,” Wiggins told PIX11 News.
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The Captain of the boat, 46-year-old Manuel Hernandez, has been arrested and charged with 13 counts of reckless endangerment as authorities investigate whether the 22-foot bow rider was being operated as an illegal charter boat.
To the retired head of the NYPD Harbor Unit, Anthony Russo, it certainly looks that way.
“The problems with unlicensed charters are the captains aren’t trained properly and they don’t know the capacity of the boat,” Russo told PIX11. “It appears that that’s what happened. It was overloaded. It didn’t need to hit anything to capsize,” he added.
Russo says the public getting on any boat should always ask to see the boating safety certificate, the occupancy requirement and the license for the charter.
“If you saw the charter advertised on Facebook, chances are it is not licensed,” Russo said. “If a charter is licensed, it will say it. This reminds me of the July 2022 boating incident,” he added.
In the July 2022 boating incident, it was a 27-foot boat that was also an unlicensed charter and it capsized in the Hudson River near Midtown Manhattan, leaving two people dead, a mother and her seven-year-old son.
The Coast Guard is still investigating what caused this boat to capsize.