Second body-cam video deleted after George Pino boat crash, FWC says

Miami Herald

08-05-2025

The body camera footage of a second officer at the scene of a Biscayne Bay boat crash that killed a teenage girl — asked by his boss to 'smell' the boat operator to see if he could detect alcohol — has been deleted, the Miami Herald confirmed Thursday with the state agency that investigated the crash.
This marks the second time within four weeks that the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, responding to the Herald's questioning, admitted that two of its officers at the crash scene who were watching over George Pino, the boat operator, deleted their body camera footage.
Body-camera footage has to be retained in criminal investigations, the FWC's own policy stipulates.
In this latest deletion, FWC Officer Keith Hernandez, the one asked to smell Pino for alcohol, mislabeled his body camera footage when he uploaded it, causing it to be deleted after 90 days, FWC spokesperson Ashlee Sklute said Thursday. The revelation came after the Herald requested Hernandez's body camera footage from the night of the crash, Sept. 4, 2022, and was told there was none.
'At this time, we do not have an explanation beyond human error for why the officers mislabeled their recordings in the audio storage system,' Sklute said.
Hernandez is one of a handful of FWC officers who had direct access to Pino after the crash. His conservation with his boss, William Thompson, the lead FWC investigator, about smelling Pino was captured on Thompson's body cam footage.
Thompson spoke to Hernandez as he and Pino were on boat heading to a triage center set up on Elliott Key, where Thompson eventually questioned Pino that night. As the boat pulls away from Thompson's vessel, Thomson yelled toward Hernandez, 'Keith Hernandez!' He then tells him quietly, 'Smell,' indicating he wanted Hernandez to smell Pino for alcohol.
Hernandez was escorting Pino to the ranger station, where the injured passengers were taken, according to Thompson's body cam footage. While Pino received medical attention from paramedics, Pino 'stated that he has 2 beers total for the day' and recounted the events leading up to the crash, according to Thompson's body-cam footage.
Pino's attorneys interviewed Hernandez last week, but transcripts of that proceeding were not available as of Thursday.
The other officer whose body camera footage was deleted from that night, Julien Gazzola, gave a sworn statement to prosecutors and Pino's lawyers in April. He told them Pino appeared intoxicated that night, noting he had bloodshot eyes when he shined a flashlight on his face, was disoriented and smelled of alcohol.
The FWC also said Gazzola's footage was deleted because the officer mislabeled it.
READ MORE: How investigators, prosecutors bungled probe into boat crash that killed teen girl
Pino rammed his 29-foot Robalo into a fixed channel marker in Biscayne Bay that night. He and his wife Cecilia were celebrating their daughter's 18th birthday and had invited 11 of her teenage girlfriends to join them in the boat outing. They were returning from Elliott Key to the Ocean Reef Club when the boat hit the marker, causing it to capsize and hurtling the passengers into the bay.
Luciana 'Lucy' Fernandez, 17, died after being trapped under the boat. Katerina 'Katy' Puig, her classmate at Our Lady of Lourdes Academy, suffered traumatic brain injury and is relearning how to walk after the crash.
READ MORE: Pino smelled of alcohol, had 'bloodshot eyes' after deadly boat crash, FWC cop says
When reached Thursday, the Fernandezes declined to comment on the missing footage.
'Since the criminal case remains pending, we will not be making any comments at this time,' Melissa and Andres Fernandez said in a text to the Herald.
FWC's policy says footage must be kept in criminal investigation
When asked about Gazzola's footage being deleted, FWC chair Rodney Barreto told the Herald that the officer 'mistakenly classified his body-worn camera footage as 'incidental' when he uploaded it to the FWC's body camera system.'
Because the footage wasn't classified as being part of a criminal investigation, it was automatically deleted by the system after 90 days, Barreto said.
'Our technology team has looked into the issue, but the footage is not available,' Barreto said.
Four days after the crash, the FWC and the Miami-Dade State Attorney's Office were already contemplating misdemeanor criminal charges for Pino, according to a text conversation between Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle and FWC Lt. Col. Alfredo Escanio, the deputy director of the south region, which the Herald obtained through a public records request.
Escanio asked Fernandez Rundle for contact information for the chief of the misdemeanor section at the State Attorney's Office. She provided it and noted the chief would be expecting the FWC's call.
If body-cam footage is part of a criminal investigation, it must be retained, legal experts say.
In fact, the FWC's own record-retention policy says body-camera footage related to misdemeanor charges must be stored for five years and a felony charge for 13 years, according to FWC records obtained by the Herald through public records requests.
Footage labeled as 'incidental' — which is how the FWC says its two officers labeled their footage — includes encounters where people are issued warnings or non-criminal infraction citations, the policy says. It's stored only for 90 days.
Felony charge after Herald investigation
Pino was initially charged with three misdemeanor counts of careless boating in August 2023, although the State Attorney's Office upgraded those charges to vessel homicide, a felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison, on Oct. 31, after a Miami Herald investigation into the crash.
The Herald's investigation led to new witnesses coming forward, prompting the Miami-Dade State Attorney's Office to reevaluate its case, drop the three misdemeanors and charge Pino with the second-degree felony, which also carries a $10,000 fine.
The Herald's investigation detailed a flawed probe by FWC investigators, including key witnesses who were never contacted and the FWC deciding not to give a Pino a sobriety test at the scene despite him telling investigators he had been drinking that day.
The FWC said it did not have probable cause to get a warrant to force Pino to take the sobriety test. But training manuals from both the FWC and State Attorney's Office list significant injuries and deaths as probable cause for a blood draw in a sobriety test, the Herald investigation found.
The day after the crash, the FWC found more than 60 empty booze containers on the boat. Pino's defense attorney, Howard Srebnick, said the empty booze containers found on Pino's boat stemmed from five boats tied up that day on Elliott Key.
Thompson, the FWC lead investigator in the case, wrote in his final report that the reason Pino declined to voluntarily submit blood to test for alcohol consumption because his lawyer wasn't present. However, in Thompson's body camera footage of the conversation, Pino declined because he had 'two beers.' That admission was not mentioned in Thompson's report.
Pino has pleaded not guilty.
More missing evidence?
The two missing body camera files are actually the third pieces of evidence that have disappeared, says an attorney for the Fernandez family.
A few weeks before the FWC filed its final report on the crash investigation in August 2023, the agency briefed the victims' families on the evidence.
Among the evidence investigators told the families existed were photos taken from a camera affixed to a channel marker by the feds to keep an eye on human smuggling via the waterways. That camera took intermittent shots of the waterway facing north in the 15 minutes leading up to the crash.
Pino had told the FWC that another boat heading toward his vessel threw a wake and caused him to lose control and crash into the channel marker. But, no witnesses on Pino's boat nor on any other boat in the channel that day saw that boat, according to the FWC's report.
Investigators told the families that they reviewed the shots from the camera on the channel marker and did not find evidence of another vessel heading toward Pino's boat, the families told the Herald last summer.
The final report mentions that photographic evidence refutes Pino's claim of another boat, however, it does not mention where the photographs came from. When the Fernandez family's attorney, Joel Denaro, filed a motion seeking that footage, he was told it no longer existed.