As George Pino’s boat-crash trial approaches, prosecutors drop minor charges
Prosecutors dropped two boating infractions against George Pino, the Doral real estate broker who rammed his boat into a channel marker — killing a 17-year-old girl in 2022 — as Pino’s trial for the girl’s death approaches.
Pino, 54, who is charged with felony offenses linked to the teen’s death, was also facing two minor charges: operating a vessel without safety gear, a misdemeanor, and operating a vessel with a registration expired for more than six months, which is a noncriminal infraction. But prosecutor Laura Adams announced that she was dropping those counts during a brief hearing Friday morning.
Adams told Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Marisa Tinkler Mendez that she wanted the jury to focus on Pino’s vessel-homicide and manslaughter charges.
Pino’s trial is set to begin on June 1.
On Sept. 4, 2022, Pino was operating his 29-foot Robalo center console when he slammed into a fixed channel marker in Biscayne Bay on his way to Ocean Reef Club, a gated community in north Key Largo. Luciana “Lucy” Fernandez, 17, and Katerina “Katy” Puig, now 21, were traumatically injured in the crash and pulled from the water unconscious.
Lucy died the next day in a hospital. Puig remains in a wheelchair and will endure a lifetime of health challenges.
If convicted of vessel homicide or manslaughter, Pino faces up to 15 years in prison.
During the hearing, attorney Mark Shapiro told the judge the defense will soon file major motions, which will be heard at a hearing on May 27.
The parents of Lucy and Katerina did not immediately respond to requests for comments about the latest developments.
The trial is highly anticipated in South Florida. Pino is a well-known businessman, and the tragic crash reverberated through Miami-Dade’s tight-knit private-school community. All 12 of the girls on Pino’s boat that day attended either Our Lady of Lourdes Academy, Carrollton School of the Sacred Heart or Westminster Christian School.
They were embarking on their senior years in which Katerina’s parents looked forward to their soccer stand-out daughter’s final season before accepting one of the many offers from Division I colleges.
The girls were celebrating the 18th birthday of Pino’s daughter Cecilia with an outing to Elliott Key in Biscayne Bay with her parents and other friends of the family. They were headed back to Ocean Reef Club, where George Pino was a member at the time, for dinner when the crash happened.
Along with Lucy and Katerina, another girl was seriously injured, but has fully recovered.
After an almost year-long investigation by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office charged Pino with three misdemeanor counts of careless boating resulting in death. Had he pleaded guilty to those charges, he was only looking at a maximum of 60 days in a county jail and the case would have been over.
But a series of Miami Herald articles detailed significant flaws in the investigation, including several key witnesses whom investigators never followed up with. A Miami-Dade firefighter on the scene that day came forward after the articles and told prosecutors he suspected Pino was intoxicated when he was pulled from the water.
The State Attorney’s Office reopened its investigation and charged Pino in October 2024 with vessel homicide, a second-degree felony with a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison. Prosecutors last August added another second-degree felony, manslaughter, after several of the girls on the boat gave sworn statements about what they saw that day. In the immediate aftermath of the crash, the girls said little to investigators because they were minors at the time.
As adults, they offered more details, including one woman telling attorneys that she drank up to 10 beers and shots of other alcohol on Pino’s boat, sources told the Miami Herald.
Nevertheless, alcohol was ruled out as a factor in the crash from the beginning despite Pino telling an FWC detective on the night of the crash he didn’t want to submit to a blood test for alcohol because he had “two beers” and investigators finding more than 60 empty and partially empty booze containers on the vessel when it was pulled from the water the day after the accident.
Pino’s attorneys say many of the bottles and cans were on his boat because he collected trash from friends on other vessels at Elliott Key.
Pino’s explanation of the cause of the crash is also in dispute.
He told investigators that a larger boat was coming at him in the channel and threw a wake that caused him to lose control of his Robalo and smash into the channel marker. But the FWC states in its report that no witness in the channel, which was busy with traffic that day, saw that boat. Nor did any of the 13 passengers on Pino’s vessel, according to the report.
