Pino smelled of alcohol, had ‘bloodshot eyes’ after deadly boat crash, FWC cop says

George Pino, who is facing a felony homicide charge in the boat crash that killed a 17-year-old girl and severely injured her classmate, smelled of alcohol, had ‘bloodshot eyes’ and was disoriented, a Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission officer at the scene said in court records filed this week.

The officer also said body camera footage capturing his interactions with Pino the night of Sept. 4, 2022, was handed over to the lead FWC investigator — but has since been deleted. 

FWC officer Julian Gazzola described Pino’s condition to Pino’s defense attorney Mark Shapiro and Miami-Dade Assistant State Attorney Laura Adams in a deposition filed Tuesday in Miami-Dade Circuit Court.

“And it’s when you shined your flashlight in Mr. Pino’s face that you observed bloodshot eyes; is that correct?” Shapiro asked Gazzola.

“Correct,’’ Gazzola replied, adding that Pino had a “flustered demeanor” and was disoriented.

A bit later in the deposition, alcohol came up in Shapiro’s questioning of Gazzola:

“Okay. So now, in addition to the bloodshot eyes, his flustered demeanor and his attempt to contact passengers who were on his boat, you also observed the smell of alcohol?”

“Correct.”

Gazzola, who had been asked by the lead FWC investigator, William Thompson, to watch over Pino while he was on the phone, said he recommended to Thompson that he conduct a field sobriety test on Pino and launch a criminal investigation.

“After having kept an eye on Mr. Pino while Investigator Thompson was handling some phone calls, you then told Investigator Thompson that he should conduct seated field sobriety testing on Mr. Pino; is that right?”

“Correct.”

“Because you believed a criminal investigation was appropriate; is that right?”

“Yes, sir.”

Thompson did not give Pino a sobriety test, saying in his final report that he did not administer the test because Pino did not show signs of impairment. FWC body camera footage from that night shows Pino saying he did not want to take the test because he “had two beers.” Thompson’s report says Pino didn’t want to take the test because his attorney wasn’t present; there was no mention in the report of any beers.

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, a Miami Herald investigation found.

READ MORE: How investigators, prosecutors bungled probe into boat crash that killed teen girl

Thompson did not launch a criminal investigation.

Three minor charges initially

Pino was initially charged with three misdemeanor counts of careless boating, one for each of the girls most seriously injured that day: Luciana ‘Lucy’ Fernandez, 17, who was trapped under the boat and drowned; Katy Puig, 17, the girl who is now relearning how to walk after her traumatic brain injury; and Isabella Rodriguez, 16, who suffered a head injury and brain bleed and has since recovered.

The State Attorney’s Office upgraded those charges to vessel homicide, a felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison, on Oct. 31. Prosecutors say they reexamined the case after veteran Miami-Dade firefighter Matthew Smiley came forward and told prosecutors Pino appeared to be intoxicated when he pulled him from the water.

Smiley spoke up after reading a series of articles in the Herald about how the FWC did not follow up with boaters on the scene that night. The boaters spoke to the Herald and gave differing accounts from what the FWC wrote in its final report 

READ MORE: ‘Radio silence’: Deadly boat crash witnesses say they weren’t interviewed by investigators

‘It is deleted’

Shapiro, Pino’s attorney, asked Gazzola if he was wearing a body camera that night and if the camera recorded his interaction with Pino. Gazzola said his camera recorded the footage, which he emailed to Thompson “in its entirety,” noting that it “can’t be altered. The software we have doesn’t allow us to do so.”

But that footage has disappeared, Gazzola told Shapiro and Adams.

“So the actual footage itself, our IT department is trying to sort out what’s going on with it because it’s on the server side, but it’s showing as deleted,” Gazzola said.

“Your entire — the entire footage from your body-worn camera on September 4, 2022, you believe that that footage was deleted?” Shapiro asked.

“Well, it is deleted,” Gazzola replied.

Gazzola said he was able to see the footage before he emailed it to Thompson and it was fully viewable. Asked again by Shapiro the condition of the footage now, Gazzola replied:

“It is deleted.”

Call came in about the crash

Gazzola was riding on a patrol boat with two other FWC officers, including Thompson, when they got the call about the crash in Cutter Bank in Biscayne Bay around 6:30 p.m. the night of Sept. 4, 2022, the Sunday night of Labor Day weekend. They traveled to the crash site from where they were patrolling around Miami Marine Stadium off Virginia Key.

After responding to the accident scene, the three traveled to Elliott Key Harbor, where Pino and some of the teenage girls, including his daughter, who were on his 29-foot Robalo when he crashed it into a fixed channel marker in Biscayne Bay, were taken. The Pinos were celebrating their daughter’s 18th birthday and had invited 11 of her teenage girlfriends to join them in the boat outing.

Prosecutors objected to harsher charge

In another deposition taken on March 18, FWC Lt. Daniel Miranda, Thompson’s boss, said he pushed for Pino to be charged with a felony but was overridden by the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office. The State Attorney’s Office claimed it couldn’t charge Pino with a felony because of what FWC investigators presented to prosecutors.

In conversations, the State Attorney’s Office, including former prosecutor Ruben Scolvano, felt that they needed more evidence that Pino operated the boat in a reckless manner to pursue a felony charge, the deposition shows.

“…We felt as investigators that this had reached a level of a felony charge for a vessel homicide,” Miranda said. “There was a discussion with the state attorney, and they felt different.”

The Herald’s review of text messages between the State Attorney’s Office and the FWC show the two agencies early on agreed that the crash did not warrant felony charges. 

Four days after the crash, the law-enforcement agencies were already contemplating misdemeanor charges, according to a text conversation between State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle and FWC Lt. Col. Alfredo Escanio, the deputy director of the south region. The Herald obtained the text messages through its public records request.

Yet the day after the crash, FWC investigators found 61 empty booze bottles and cans on the boat, which had been carrying 12 underage girls. Pino’s defense attorney, Howard Srebnick, has said the crash was a tragic accident and the empty booze containers found on Pino’s boat stemmed from five boats tied up that day on Elliott Key.

Pino is expected to face trial in connection to the death of Lucy, a student at Our Lady of Lourdes Academy, in July.

Joel Denaro, an attorney for the Fernandez family, said of the depositions, “We do not have a comment at this time.”

This story was originally published April 10, 2025 at 6:23 PM with the headline "Pino smelled of alcohol, had ‘bloodshot eyes’ after deadly boat crash, FWC cop says."