‘Lucy's Law,' named after teen killed in Biscayne Bay boat crash, passes in session's final hours
'Lucy's Law' is named after Luciana 'Lucy' Fernandez, the Our Lady of Lourdes Academy senior who died Sept. 5, 2022, a day after George Pino crashed his boat into a fixed channel marker in Biscayne Bay during an 18th birthday celebration for the Doral real estate broker's daughter. Lucy was one of 12 teenage girls in the boat.
After hours of back-and-forth negotiating, the Senate passed the bill in a 31-0 vote. The House then passed it with a 93-1 vote.
The bill was the first item the House took up when the Legislative session began on March 4, and one of the last it approved in the final hours of the session late Friday night.
'We started our 60 days in the presence of Lucy, and end our 60 days in the presence of Lucy,' said House Speaker Danny Perez, a Miami Republican.
The bill boosts the penalties for operating a boat in a crash that ends in serious injury, for providing misleading statements to law enforcement during a boat-crash investigation and boating under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
'This is actually going to save lives,' said one of the bill's sponsor, Rep. Vicki Lopez, a Miami-Dade Republican. 'We are going to deter people from acting recklessly on the water.'
But the bill, also sponsored by Rep. Vanessa Oliver in the House and state Sen. Jonathan Martin, does not require law enforcement officers to give a boat operator a sobriety test on the scene in boat crashes with serious injury or death. In the Pino crash, investigators with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission did not give Pino a sobriety test, despite him admitting to them he had been drinking that day.
READ MORE: How investigators, prosecutors bungled probe into boat crash that killed teen girl
And in the late-hour horse trading between the House and the Senate, a key passage about the state revising its rules on who must pass a boater-safety course before operating a vessel was deleted.
The bill's passage is a bittersweet end to a years-long endeavor by Lucy's parents — Melissa and Andres Fernandez — to get it to lawmakers.
'Since the day we lost Lucy, our mission has been clear: to fight for her, to fight for safer waters, to fight for a culture of accountability—so all Floridians can enjoy the freedom and beauty of our waters responsibly,' the Fernandezes said in a statement Friday night.
The Miami-Dade County State Attorney's Office had initially charged Pino with three misdemeanor counts of careless boating in August 2023, outraging Melissa and Andres and the parents of Lucy's seriously injured classmate, now-19 year-old Katerina Puig, a soccer star with major college prospects who suffered traumatic brain injury and needs a wheelchair.
A year later, prosecutors reexamined the case after never-before-interviewed witnesses came forward disputing major aspects of the investigation. Three of the witnesses — boaters who were at the scene in the aftermath of the crash — spoke to the Miami Herald, prompting a fourth witness to come forward. That witness, a Miami-Dade Fire Rescue medic on the scene, said Pino appeared intoxicated when he pulled him from the water.
Last October, the State Attorney's Office dropped the misdemeanors and charged Pino with reckless boating resulting in death — or vessel homicide — a second-degree felony.
Had Pino pleaded guilty to the misdemeanors, he was looking at 60 days in county jail and a $500 fine. He now faces up to 15 years in state prison and a $10,000 fine if convicted of the vessel-homicide felony. His trial is scheduled for July.
Under the newly passed legislation, reckless boating resulting in serious injury will be a third-degree felony, instead of a misdemeanor. Reckless boating resulting in death remains as a second-degree felony. And, anyone convicted of boating-under-the influence manslaughter will be punished with a mandatory minimum four-year prison sentence.
'The Puig family is happy with the passage of the Lucy Law, a significant step toward enhancing safety on Florida's waters. This law aims to prevent accidents and promote responsible behavior,' Katerina's father, Rudy Puig, said in an email to the Herald.
When Pino hit the channel marker, his 29-foot Robalo capsized, hurtling all 14 people on the boat — the 12 teenage girls and George Pino and his wife Cecilia— into the bay on that Sunday evening of Labor Day weekend in 2022. Lucy was trapped under the boat and died the next day in a hospital. Katerina was found unconscious in the water along with another girl, Isabella Rodriguez, who has recovered. Katerina was left with physical and cognitive disabilities.
Pino told the FWC investigators that a larger boat's wake caused him to lose control of his boat.
All witnesses and photographic and global positioning satellite data dispute that.
Under Lucy's Law, if the operator of a vessel in a crash that results in the death of a person provides misleading statements to police, that person could be charged with a second-degree misdemeanor.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission's decision to quickly rule out alcohol as a factor in the crash despite potential evidence to the contrary inflamed the victims' families.
The FWC, the state law-enforcement agency that investigates boat crashes, said it did not have probable cause to get a warrant to force Pino to take the sobriety test even though Pino told the lead FWC investigator at the scene he had 'two beers' that day. And 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, a Miami Herald investigation found.
READ MORE: How investigators, prosecutors bungled probe into boat crash that killed teen girl
The day after the crash, FWC investigators pulled the boat from the bottom of the channel and discovered more than 60 empty booze bottles and cans on the boat. (Pino's defense attorney, Howard Srebnick, has said the empty booze containers stemmed from five boats tied up that day on Elliott Key.)
In the lead-up to Pino's trial, both prosecutors and defense attorneys have been taking sworn statements from witnesses, some of whom have cast more doubt on the rigor of the initial investigation.
Last month, an FWC patrol officer who was at the crash scene told lawyers in a deposition that Pino's eyes were bloodshot and he had a 'flustered demeanor' as he shined a flashlight in his face. He also told the FWC's lead investigator on the scene that he should conduct a sobriety test on Pino; the investigator didn't.
The officer's interaction with Pino was recorded on his body camera, he told the attorneys, but the footage was somehow deleted.
Rodney Barreto, whom the state Senate reconfirmed for his fourth term as FWC chair earlier this week, told the Herald in an email that the officer, Julian Gazzola, mislabeled the footage, resulting in it being automatically deleted 90 days after he submitted it.
Lucy's Law was to include another stipulation that would have impacted Florida's deeply ingrained boating culture.
Florida law requires those born after Jan. 1, 1988 — or those 37 years old and younger — to complete a boater-safety course before they can operate a vessel.
Lucy's Law would have expanded that requirement to those older than 37, but who haven't lived in Florida for five consecutive years at the time they first began operating a boat. That part of the bill was stripped before the final vote.
According to the FWC's latest data, in 2023, 83% of boat operators in fatal accidents had no formal boating education.
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