George Pino boat-crash case will soon be in jurors’ hands. Follow for updates
Prosecutors and defense attorneys on Monday morning will present their final arguments for the jury weighing whether Doral real estate broker George Pino is guilty of criminal charges stemming from his boat crash that killed a teen girl.
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After closing arguments, the six-person jury, made up of five men and one woman, will determine whether Pino, 54, should be convicted of manslaughter and vessel homicide stemming from his Sept. 4, 2022, boat crash in Biscayne Bay.
Luciana “Lucy” Fernandez, 17, was killed and Katerina “Katy” Puig, now 21, was left with life-altering physical and neurological disabilities. Both were students at Our Lady of Lourdes Academy.
The crash happened around 6 p.m. on the Sunday of Labor Day weekend in 2022. Pino was taking his wife, Cecilia, their daughter Cecilia and 11 of her friends back to the Ocean Reef Club in north Key Largo after an outing on Elliott Key to celebrate his daughter’s upcoming 18th birthday. They were planning to go dinner that night at the club with the girls.
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The trial was marked by eight days of difficult-to-listen testimony, emotional outbursts and more than one tense moment between Pino and lead prosecutor Laura Adams.
During the trial, the jury saw drone and camera footage that captured a FWC boat traveling around the same speed as Pino’s at the time of the crash. The re-enactment videos were meant to show Pino had an unobstructed path on the waterway during the nine seconds before he slammed into Channel Marker 15, the last marker before getting to the docks at Ocean Reef.
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Pino had previously said he had swerved his vessel to the right to avoid the wake of another boat. No witness, including the passengers on Pino’s 29-foot Robalo or in other boats behind him in the channel, saw what Adams has called the “phantom boat.” GPS data showed that Pino did not swerve before hitting the marker.
A boat crash expert testified that in the nine seconds leading up to the crash, Pino traveled the length of two football fields while going 47 mph, a high rate of speed on the water.
Over several days of testimony, jurors heard from four of the teenage girls who were on the boat when it crashed. They admitted that they had consumed alcoholic beverages that were stashed in a cooler on the boat, despite being under the legal drinking age of 21.
When FWC investigators pulled the boat from the bay the day after the crash, there were 61 empty or partially empty booze bottles and cans on the boat. Pino’s attorney said the bottles and cans came from other boats tied up that day with them off Elliott Key.
On the first day of the trial, Pino garnered national attention when he sobbed and breathed heavily about an hour into opening statements. Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Marisa Tinkler Mendez sent the jury out of the courtroom and subsequently paused proceedings.
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This report will be updated
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