{"id":317538,"date":"2026-08-10T05:06:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-10T05:06:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/317538\/"},"modified":"2026-08-10T05:06:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-10T05:06:12","slug":"friends-of-new-york-harbor-capsized-boat-victims-have-no-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/317538\/","title":{"rendered":"Friends of New York Harbor capsized boat victims ‘have no words’"},"content":{"rendered":"

COLLEGE POINT, Queens (PIX11) \u2014 So many questions about why a\u00a022-foot boat capsized in New York Harbor<\/a> with 14 people on board. A mother and her five-month-old baby girl died.<\/p>\n

As the Coast Guard and the NYPD continue to investigate, in the neighborhood where the mother and baby lived, there is only grief.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe have no words. It is just devastation,\u201d Santina Wiggins, assistant manager of Marco Hotel and a friend of the woman who died, told PIX11 News. \u201cOur hearts go out to Andres,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Her husband, Andres Garcia, was also on board the boat when it capsized near Liberty Island late Saturday night.<\/p>\n

The Coast Guard and the NYPD successfully rescued Garcia and 11 others, but his wife and daughter died later at a hospital.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re setting up a fundraiser for him and his son because now he is a single dad,\u201d Wiggins told PIX11 News.<\/p>\n

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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.<\/p>\n

To the retired head of the NYPD Harbor Unit, Anthony Russo, it certainly looks that way.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe problems with unlicensed charters are the captains aren\u2019t trained properly and they don\u2019t know the capacity of the boat,\u201d Russo told PIX11. \u201cIt appears that that\u2019s what happened. It was overloaded. It didn\u2019t need to hit anything to capsize,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Russo says the public getting on any boat should\u00a0always ask to see the boating safety certificate, the occupancy requirement and the license for the charter.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you saw the charter advertised on Facebook, chances are it is not licensed,\u201d Russo said. \u201cIf a charter is licensed, it will say it. This reminds me of the July 2022 boating incident,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The Coast Guard is still investigating what caused this boat to capsize.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"COLLEGE POINT, Queens (PIX11) \u2014 So many questions about why a\u00a022-foot boat capsized in New York Harbor with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":317539,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[9,11,10],"class_list":["post-317538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=317538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317538\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/317539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}