Three years later, Pino boat crash case keeps piling on new twists | Opinion

When George Pino pleaded not guilty Wednesday to new charges in the boating crash case that took the life of high school student Lucy Fernandez, 17, and permanantly disabled another teenage passenger, it wasn’t a surprise. Attorneys for the South Florida real estate broker whose boat slammed into a concrete channel marker in Biscayne Bay in 2022 have called the collision a tragic accident and said that Pino should not be prosecuted.

But nearly three years later, this case isn’t going away. Nor should it. With each new twist — the latest was a manslaughter charge filed last week by prosecutors in the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office, which cited new information — it becomes even more important for the community to understand who is at fault, if anyone.

One girl died and another was severely injured. That alone should be enough to warrant a full and transparent investigation, no matter how long it takes. But this is also a case that includes possible problems with the way investigators and prosecutors proceeded. South Floridians have a right to know whether the justice system is being applied with an even hand and whether investigative procedures are being followed.

The judge in the case, Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Marisa Tinkler Mendez, on Wednesday warned lawyers on both sides to keep their focus on the case, not the publicity surrounding it. “We are not trying this case in the media,” she said. “This case will be tried in this courtroom in front of a jury.”

She’s right: Pino remains innocent until proven otherwise. Public and media attention probably pushed prosecutors to look into this case more diligently, showing the power that bringing new facts to light can have. But public outrage should not determine the outcome of a trial; evidence should.

The case has been heartbreaking for many in South Florida, with circumstances that are hard to forget: A boat full of teenagers celebrating the 18th birthday of Pino’s daughter crashed into a stationary channel marker. All 14 people aboard were knocked into the water. Pino, the boat’s pilot, told authorities he’d had two beers. He refused a sobriety test, and law enforcement officers didn’t push the issue. The next day, when the capsized boat was pulled from the bay’s floor, police found lots of booze bottles and cans. Pino’s lawyer says they were from other boats anchored nearby, but that’s a tough one to believe.

From the start, the charges have been hard to understand. First, there were three careless boating counts, misdemeanors. Then — last fall, after the Miami Herald published articles detailing how Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission investigators hadn’t initially interviewed some key witnesses — prosecutors charged Pino with felony vessel homicide, with a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

Then there was the deleted body cam footage. As the Herald reported, footage from the body cams worn by four FWC officers at the scene was deleted, with an FWC spokesperson telling the Herald that when the officers uploaded the video, it was classified as “incidental,” not “criminal.” So it wasn’t saved.

Now there’s another charge, manslaughter, also a felony punishable by a maximum of 15 years in prison and filed after prosecutors spoke with a new witness. The Herald reported that girls on the boat told investigators about the flow of alcohol that day. One girl said she drank up to 10 beers and multiple shots of alcohol on Pino’s boat that day, the Herald reported.

A civil suit filed by the family of Katerina “Katy” Puig, now 20, who was seriously injured in the crash and remains in a wheelchair, alleges that Pino and his wife, Cecilia, supplied the minors with alcohol, which the Pinos denied. The toxicology report for Puig, taken at the hospital four hours after the crash, showed she had almost twice the .08% legal limit for driving, the Herald said.

The state can file both felony charges against Pino, but he cannot be convicted of both due to constitutional protections against double jeopardy. A jury could consider either option during a trial.

Pino’s defense attorney, Howard Srebnick, has called the new filing “duplicative of existing allegations” and said it doesn’t bring “clarity or justice; it only deepens public misunderstanding, fuels a false narrative that ignores the facts and unfairly portrays Pino in the court of public opinion.”

The case is set for trial on June 1, 2026. But no trial will be able to make this right. No civil case can turn back the clock. No criminal charges can undo that day in 2022. An investigation, with full disclosure of the facts, is the only way forward, and a trial is the only possibility of some form of justice in this tragic case.

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