Federal prosecutors say the 46-year-old man who was piloting the boat that capsized in New York Harbor Saturday evening was operating it without a required license and ignored safety protocols, causing the deaths of a mother and infant daughter onboard.<\/p>\n
Authorities allege his criminally negligent behavior included carrying 14 people on a boat with a maximum allowable capacity of 10 and taking the group on board without an infant life jacket.<\/p>\n
Manuel Hernandez, of Manville, New Jersey, was charged in federal court on Monday with two counts of misconduct and neglect of a ship officer resulting in death, each carrying a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison. He appeared in court wearing a gray T-shirt and white swimming trunks.<\/p>\n
Federal prosecutors, who took over the case from local authorities, said Hernandez didn\u2019t have the required Merchant Mariner Credential while operating a boat on a tour for paying customers that had been arranged through a tour company and that the Yamaha AR210 was of a type and size that could never have received the sort of Coast Guard certificate of inspection needed to operate it legally with paying customers on board.<\/p>\n
\u201cFederal regulations and maritime safety protocols exist to protect the lives and wellbeing of passengers on commercial vessels,\u201d U.S. Attorney Jamie McDonald said in a statement Monday. \u201cThe defendant allegedly flouted those regulations when he transported paying customers on a commercial vessel without appropriate licenses, overcrowded the vessel, and took on a 5-month-old infant passenger, with no infant life vests onboard.\u201d<\/p>\n
The NYPD has said 27-year-old mother Sara Sanchez and her 5-month-old daughter Antonella Garcia died when the 22-foot bowrider capsized near the Statue of Liberty around 10:30 p.m. on Saturday, and all 14 people were tossed overboard. The other 12 people survived. The NYPD originally charged Hernandez with more than a dozen counts of reckless endangerment before the case moved out of local courts.<\/p>\n
Hernandez was released Monday on a $50,000 bond, with conditions barring him from traveling outside New York and New Jersey or contacting the boat’s passengers or employees of the tour company.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis tragedy could have been prevented, and now a family is left to grieve the unimaginable loss of a mother and her five-month-old daughter because of his negligence,\u201d NYPD Commissioner Jessica S. Tisch said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Hernandez’s attorney could not be reached Monday afternoon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Federal prosecutors say the 46-year-old man who was piloting the boat that capsized in New York Harbor Saturday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":318443,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9,24,55,54,56],"class_list":["post-318442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318442","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=318442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318442\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/318443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}