Lawmaker calls for probe into FWC after 4 officers had video footage deleted in Pino crash
Rep. Vicki Lopez, a Miami-Dade Republican state House member, called on her colleagues in the Legislature 'to learn what exactly happened and why so this never happens again.'
READ MORE: 'Lucy's Law,' named after teen killed in Biscayne Bay boat crash, passes in session's final hours
The call for the investigation comes after the Herald reported that body camera footage from four officers with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission — who were on the scene of the crash and were either in direct contact with or were near the boat operator, Doral real estate broker George Pino — has been deleted.
'I might understand if one of the officers had made a mistake but from what we now know it is impossible to assume that four highly trained officers could all have made such an egregious error,' Lopez said in a statement she posted on the Miami Herald's Instagram account.
The FWC says the footage was deleted after the officers classified it as 'incidental,' not criminal, when they uploaded it into the FWC's computer system. 'Incidental' footage is automatically deleted after 90 days; footage from a criminal investigation has to be retained five years for misdemeanor charges and 13 years for a felony charge, according to the FWC's policy.
'Full investigation is warranted'
Lopez said that it ultimately should not have mattered how the officers labeled their footage since it was the responsibility of the investigators to retain all of the evidence.
'And, assume for a moment that they all made a mistake they still had plenty of time to correct their error since body camera footage is not deleted for 90 days,' Lopez said in her Instagram post. 'It is obvious that a full investigation is warranted into what actually happened on that harrowing day.'
The FWC declined to comment Friday on Lopez's statement.
In her post, Lopez asked Rep. Danny Alvarez, a Hillsborough County Republican and chair of the House Criminal Justice Committee, to lead the investigation into the FWC's handling of the crash.
Alvarez's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Herald.
Lopez co-sponsored a House bill calling for tougher penalties for boat operators in crashes with serious injury. The law will go into effect July 1.
Pino, 54, crashed his 29-foot Robalo boat into a fixed channel marker in Biscayne Bay on Sept. 4, 2022, during a celebration for his daughter's 18th birthday. Pino, his wife, their daughter and her 11 teenage friends were thrown into the water after impact, and the boat capsized.
All were injured, although Luciana 'Lucy' Fernandez, Katerina Puig and Isabella Rodriguez were seriously injured. Lucy, who was not breathing when she was pulled from the water, died in the hospital the next day. She was 17 and a senior at Our Lady of Lourdes Academy.
While Isabella Rodriguez, then 17, has recovered, Katerina Puig —a standout Lourdes soccer player with Division 1 college prospects — suffered lifelong injuries and is relearning to walk. Katerina was also 17.
The FWC's initial investigation resulted in prosecutors with the Miami-Dade State Attorney's Office charging Pino with three counts of misdemeanor careless boating in August 2023. Pino pleaded not guilty. If convicted, the maximum penalty would have been 60 days in county jail.
The agency's lead investigator quickly ruled out alcohol despite Pino telling him that night he drank two beers and officers finding more than 60 empty bottles and cans of booze on his boat the next day when they pulled it from the water.
No evidence of other boat in channel coming toward him
Pino also maintains another boat coming his way in the channel threw a wake and caused him to hit the channel marker. The FWC, in its final report, stated no witnesses — including the people on his boat or boaters in the channel that day — saw that vessel. Photographic evidence also does not support his claim.
Following a series of Miami Herald articles detailing flaws in the investigation, including FWC officers never following up with eyewitnesses, a Miami-Dade firefighter at the scene that day spoke to the State Attorney's Office and said Pino displayed signs of intoxication that day.
Prosecutors reopened their investigation and charged Pino with felony vessel homicide on Oct. 31. Pino pleaded not guilty and is tentatively scheduled to stand trial in September. He now faces 15 years in prison if convicted.
'If we don't get justice, it will be because of the way the FWC investigated this,' Lopez said in an interview Friday with the Miami Herald.
Lopez said the probe should be independent of the FWC and look into whether there are fundamental problems with the way the state agency trains its officers.
'You don't expect law enforcement to make these types of egregious errors,' Lopez told the Herald. 'We are past being shocked, and we are now demanding answers.'
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Boston Globe
27 minutes ago
- Boston Globe
Why Trump continues to lie about the 2020 presidential election
The right results were given in 2020. Trump lost. But nearly five years later, whenever Trump speaks, the question isn't whether he'll find a way to switch the conversation to the 2020 election but when. Given his tendency to babble about inconsequential subjects, it's tempting to dismiss Trump's off-script ramblings. But don't overlook the method behind the madness here. Get The Gavel A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr. Enter Email Sign Up From Trump's Advertisement That's what he's doing every time he repeats the Big Lie about 2020. He upholds it as an example of a dishonest election stolen from the people despite no evidence of widespread fraud in that presidential contest. Trump lost because American voters had enough of him. Advertisement The president's motives are clear. He needs Republicans to hold on to the House in 2026 because he knows that if Democrats regain control they'll start impeachment hearings against him as soon as possible. For all his big talk about big wins in his second term, Trump knows that voters, For years, Trump undermined election integrity. As the 2016 presidential contest entered its final weeks, he falsely claimed that the election was This was Trump's hedge against a possible defeat: He could only lose an election if it was rigged against him. Of course, all of his machinations after he lost in 2020 supercharged his baseless allegations, culminating in the deadly insurrection at the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, when he attempted to overthrow the outcome of the presidential election. But despite Trump's impeachment for incitement, he hasn't stopped promoting the antidemocratic lie that he was robbed and that election integrity must be restored, while he's doing everything to destroy it. That includes Trump's latest attempt to end mail-in voting by Advertisement Mail-in balloting garnered widespread use during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. According to a Trump remains unswayed. He Seven months into his Trump uses 2020 as a phony example of a crooked election. That's why he brings it up as often as possible and usually in places where he receives no pushback. But the voters he's targeting should also remember 2020 as the year when a historic number of people, despite a pandemic, cast their ballots and tossed this tyrant out of power. Renée Graham is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at
The Hill
27 minutes ago
- The Hill
California Republicans file suit to halt redistricting plan
California Republican legislators on Tuesday announced a state Supreme Court petition, an effort to stop Gov. Gavin Newsom's (D) plan to redistrict House seats in the Golden State. 'Today I joined my colleagues in filing a lawsuit challenging the rushed redistricting process. California's Constitution requires bills to be in print for 30 days, but that safeguard was ignored. By bypassing this provision, Sacramento has effectively shut voters out of engaging in their own legislative process,' Assemblyman Tri Ta said on X. The petition cites a section of the state constitution that requires a month-long review period for new legislation. Democrats are working quickly to set up a special election that would let voters weigh in on the redistricting plan. Four state Republican legislators have signed on to the petition, according to a copy for a writ of mandate, shared by the New York Times. They're asking for immediate relief, no later than Aug. 20, and arguing that action can't be taken on the legislative package before Sep. 18. 'Last night, we filed a petition with the California Supreme Court to stop the California legislature from violating the rights of the people of California,' said Mike Columbo, a partner at Dhillon Law Group, in a Tuesday press conference alongside California Republicans. 'The California constitution clearly gives the people of California the right to see new legislation that the legislature is going to consider, and it gives them the right to review it for 30 days,' Columbo said. California Democrats swiftly introduced the redistricting legislative package when they reconvened after summer break on Monday, and are expected to vote as soon as Thursday. They have until Friday to complete the plan in time to set up a Nov. 4 special election. Columbo called that pace of action a 'flagrant violation' under the state constitution. Democrats are aiming to put a ballot measure before voters that would allow temporary redistricting, effectively bypassing the existing independent redistricting commission — which was approved by voters more than a decade ago and typically redistricts after each census — to redraw lines in direct response to GOP gerrymandering in other states. California Republicans have vowed to fight back. Democrats, on the other hand, are stressing that they're moving transparently to let voters have the final say on whether redistricting happens.
The Hill
27 minutes ago
- The Hill
Jeffries vows to call Kristi Noem to testify in long-overdue oversight push
When House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries promised that Kristi Noem would be one of the first called before Congress if Democrats take the majority in 2026, he wasn't just previewing political theater — he was signaling a long-overdue accountability moment. Because what we've seen under Noem's watch as Homeland Security secretary isn't just controversial policy, it's a collision between power and the Constitution. Listen, the government has every right to deport violent criminals. But what we're talking about here isn't that. These are families being ripped apart, U.S. citizen children deported to countries they've never known, and raids on churches, swap meets and sidewalks that read less like lawful arrests and more like kidnappings in broad daylight. Armed, masked agents storming neighborhoods — it looks less like 'law and order' and more like a scene from a dystopian movie. Except it's not fiction. It's happening here. And at the center of it is Secretary Noem, who, when asked to define 'habeas corpus' earlier this year — which, by the way, is a bedrock constitutional right — got it flat-out wrong. She described it as the president's power to deport people. That's not just a slip of the tongue; that's a fundamental misunderstanding of the very principle that protects all of us from government overreach. Habeas corpus is the right of a person to challenge their detention. Without it, the government could lock up anyone indefinitely. Even Abraham Lincoln had to go to Congress before suspending it during the Civil War. Yet somehow, Kristi Noem thinks she can redefine it on the fly. Meanwhile, lawsuits are piling up. The ACLU and others say these mass raids aren't about justice, they're about quotas. Three thousand arrests a day, demanded from the White House, no matter who gets caught in the dragnet. The result? Overcrowded, dungeon-like detention centers, families denied food, water and lawyers. That's not just cruel — it's unconstitutional. And it costs taxpayers millions to warehouse people who pose no threat to society. Jeffries is right: this calls for oversight. Not partisan point-scoring, but a public examination of what happens when immigration policy is driven by fear, politics and raw numbers instead of law, due process and human dignity. Because if the government can strip immigrants of rights today, what's to stop them from doing the same to citizens tomorrow? Kristi Noem may soon face Congress, but make no mistake — this is bigger than her. It's about whether America will continue to twist the meaning of justice until it serves whoever holds power, or whether we'll insist that justice, in this country, still means something. This isn't about Kristi Noem forgetting her civics lesson. It's about whether America still remembers its own.
