Two more FWC officers’ body cam footage from Pino boat crash deleted, agency says
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The investigation into 2022 boat crash that killed a high school student
On Sept. 4, 2022, a boat operated by real estate broker George Pino crashed in Biscayne Bay, killing 17-year-old Lucy Fernandez.
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The body camera footage of two additional state police officers who were on the scene of a Biscayne Bay boat crash that killed a teenage girl — and were in close proximity to the vessel’s operator George Pino — was deleted, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission confirmed Monday night.
This latest disclosure follows the Herald’s reporting of two other FWC officers who had their body-cam footage deleted from that night, bringing the total number of deleted officer videos to four. The body camera footage is pivotal in assessing whether Pino showed signs of being impaired by alcohol, as one of the FWC officers attested to in a sworn statement, although other FWC officers disputed that.
The FWC did not give Pino a sobriety test at the scene despite admitting to the officers that he had “2 beers” that day. The agency said it lacked probable cause to get a warrant to force Pino to take the test, although its own policies list significant injuries and deaths as probable cause for a blood draw in a sobriety test, a Herald investigation found.
The Herald learned the footage of FWC officers Hanna Hayden and Jesse Whitt was destroyed after requesting the videos of both officers from the Sept. 4, 2022, crash. To date, the FWC, the state law enforcement agency that investigated the boat crash, has confirmed the footage from four officers on the scene — Hayden, Whitt, Julien Gazzola and Keith Hernandez — was deleted during the agency’s criminal investigation of Pino.
The footage was deleted after the officers classified it as “incidental,” not criminal, when they uploaded it into the FWC’s computer system, according to FWC spokesperson Ashlee Sklute. “Incidental” footage is automatically deleted after 90 days; footage from a criminal investigation has to be retained five years for misdemeanor charges and 13 years for a felony charge, according to the FWC’s policy.
Sklute, in an email late Monday night to the Herald, said the agency had “no further information to provide.”
The revelation about the additional deleted footage comes as a clip emerged of FWC chair Rodney Barreto, speaking on a radio show weeks after the crash, promising he “calls balls and strikes” but acknowledging to the hosts he knew Pino personally. Around the same time, FWC brass vowed the crash investigation was “top on our priority list” and that its investigators would “look at all the available evidence, speak to everyone involved and analyze crucial data to ensure an accurate assessment is made.”
But, not only was body camera footage deleted, FWC investigators never interviewed key eyewitnesses, boaters who were on the scene immediately after the crash and had arrived before first responders. The Herald interviewed three eyewitnesses who said Pino was dazed and clinging to the hull of his overturned boat.
The FWC almost immediately ruled out alcohol as a factor despite finding a stash of empty booze bottles and cans on Pino’s boat when its officers pulled it from the bay the day after the crash. (Pino’s attorney, Howard Srebnick, has said the empty booze containers were from five boats tied up that day in the bay.)
Barreto knows Pino from real estate
Barreto told the Herald Tuesday that he knows Pino, but not well, and has never spoken with him about the case. Barreto, a Coral Gables developer, said he knows Pino because he’s a real estate broker, but the two have never done business together.
Regarding the investigation, Barreto said although he chairs the FWC, he is appointed and his role is policy making, not the law enforcement aspect of the agency. The governor appoints the FWC chair, who has to be confirmed by the state Senate.
“I do not get in the way of these investigations,” Barreto said. Regarding the “balls and strikes” comment, Barreto said that meant, “We’re gonna call it like it is. We’ve got no dog in this fight. It doesn’t matter who these people are.”
When the Herald reported on May 8 that Hernandez’s footage was deleted along with Gazzola’s, the FWC said it was because of “human error” on both officers’ parts. A day after the Herald published its story, the FWC changed its position, saying the agency’s policy on body-worn cameras “lacks clear guidance for officers who are present on the scene in a supporting role, rather than as primary investigators or arresting officers.”
“The policy is now under revision to provide clearer direction, particularly regarding supervisory review and categorization expectations in such scenarios,” Sklute previously told the Herald.
What remains unclear is why the officers were labeling their footage as if the crash were a minor incident when FWC investigators were mulling charging Pino with felony reckless boating — a criminal charge — just days after the crash, according to the Herald’s reporting on the FWC investigation. And why no one within the FWC caught the mislabeling during the 90 days the footage sat in the FWC’s computer system before it was deleted.
Differing accounts on Pino’s behavior
Whitt was on a patrol boat with his partner, Officer Nick Montero, when they got the call about the crash, according to a sworn statement he gave to a prosecutor and Pino’s defense attorneyon March 25. They were the first FWC boat on scene, joining Miami-Dade Police and Fire Rescue personnel who had already arrived by boat to the chaotic crash scene in Biscayne Bay.
Pino, 54, had slammed his 29-foot Robalo into a concrete channel marker on a clear day in the bay, capsizing the boat and hurtling him, his wife Cecilia and the 12 teenage girls on the boat into the water. The Pinos’ daughter was celebrating her 18th birthday and she had invited 11 of her teenage girlfriends on the boat outing.
One girl, 17-year-old Luciana ‘Lucy’ Fernandez, who was trapped under the boat, died the next day in the hospital. Her classmate at Our Lady of Lourdes Academy, Katerina ‘Katy’ Puig, now 19, was left with permanent injuries and is still relearning to walk. A third girl, then 16-year-old Isabella Rodriguez, suffered a head injury and brain bleed but has since recovered.
When Whitt and Montero arrived, Pino was already on a boat belonging to boaters who were on the scene before first responders and were tending to the victims. In his sworn statement, Whitt said his interaction with Pino was brief, but he noticed he had a head injury and was “flustered” but didn’t seem drunk.
“In my very very short time dealing with him in that moment, I didn’t pick up on any — any signs of impairment, in my short dealings with him,” Whitt told Pino’s defense attorney Mark Shapiro and Laura Adams, the lead prosecutor with the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office.
After speaking with Pino, Whitt hopped back on his patrol boat and was assigned to stay next to the overturned Robalo with his lights on to ensure no other boats ran into it throughout the night. He estimates he stayed with the boat until he was relieved by another FWC officer six to eight hours later, according to his statement.
READ MORE: ‘Just a boating accident.’ FWC officer says why body cam was deleted in Pino crash
In an interview with Shapiro and Adamson March 24,Gazzola said Pino appeared intoxicated, noting he had bloodshot eyes when he shined a flashlight on his face, was disoriented and smelled of alcohol. In his May 1statement, Hernandez said he didn’t see signs that Pino had been drinking that night.
In a conversation captured on body camera footage of lead investigator William Thompson, Thompson told Hernandez to smell Pino for alcohol. Hernandez was escorting Pino to the ranger station, where the injured passengers were taken.
While Pino received medical attention from paramedics, Pino “stated that he had 2 beers total for the day” and recounted the events leading up to the crash, according to Hernandez’s supplemental report.
Officer Hanna Hayden was on a patrol boat with Gazzola and Thompson near Miami Marine Stadium off Virginia Key when they got the call about the crash, according to her sworn statement in March to Shapiro and Adams.
The group sped first to Elliott Key, where the injured were being taken. Once they found out they weren’t needed there, they went to the crash scene, Hayden told the attorneys.
At the scene, Thompson gathered information from his officers about what happened. That’s when he told Hernandez to keep an eye on Pino to smell him for alcohol, according to Thompson’s body camera footage.
Hayden said her role at the time was just to help out if needed.
“But I mostly was there if anyone needed help, to assist with — you know, for the most part, I was kind of standing in the back, just making sure if I was needed to be called on,” she said. “But it seemed like everything was already being handled by someone else at that point, so my role was not very big at that moment.”
They then went back to Elliott Key, where Thompson interviewed Pino. Hayden was tasked with speaking with some of the girls who were on the boat.
She spoke with Pino’s daughter, Cecilia. Cecilia didn’t provide details of what happened leading up to the crash or its aftermath, but helped Hayden draw a diagram of where everyone was sitting on the boat, the officer said in her statement.
She said she saw Pino on Elliott Key, but did not speak with him, just his daughter.
“I do remember him on that island, on Elliott Key with us. I wasn’t involved with — he was off, I believe, at a picnic table with Officer Hernandez, from what I recall, for most of the evening, but I did see him,” Hayden said.
Videos accessed, deleted
Gazzola’s body camera footage was uploaded to the FWC system on Sept. 7, 2022, according to a chain of custody log the Miami Herald obtained in a public records request. The video was listed as deleted by “system operation” on March 3, 2023, six months after the crash.
Gazzola had sent the footage to Thompson on Sept. 8, 2022, four days after the crash. The footage was accessed days later by Justin Torres, who retained the footage twice for 90 days. Torres’ LinkedIn account says he works as a criminal justice information analyst for the FWC in Tallahassee.
Records also show Gazzola attempted to view the footage in March 2025, days before his interview with Shapiro and Adams.
Hernandez’s body camera footage was uploaded to the system on Sept. 8, 2022, according to his chain of custody log. It was deleted by “system operation” on Dec. 3, 2022. The video wasn’t accessed by anyone other than Hernandez before it was deleted.
The Miami Herald requested the chain of custody log for Hayden and Whitt’s footage but hasn’t received those records yet.
READ MORE: How investigators, prosecutors bungled probe into boat crash that killed teen girl
Pino is awaiting trial on a felony vessel homicide charge, which carries a sentence of up to 15 years in prison, if convicted. He was initially charged with only three misdemeanor counts of careless boating, which carry a sentence of 60 days in jail.
The Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office upped the charge to a felony after a series of Miami Herald articles detailed a flawed investigation into the crash from the beginning.
Pino’s trial was scheduled for July, but was rescheduled for September.
Barreto, while maintaining the FWC’s investigation contributed to Pino now facing a felony charge, said aspects of the investigation, chiefly why the body camera footage wasn’t retained as evidence, will be reevaluated.
“I will submit to you — I’m sure the agency is going to review all of this,” he said, adding, “I don’t think anything will happen before the trial is done.”
This story was originally published May 20, 2025 at 2:24 PM.
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