FWC chair questions why no sobriety test of Pino in fatal boat crash, emails show
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The investigation into 2022 boat crash that killed a high school student
On Sept. 4, 2022, a boat operated by real estate broker George Pino crashed in Biscayne Bay, killing 17-year-old Lucy Fernandez.
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The head of the state agency that investigates fatal boat crashes has repeatedly defended his agency’s probe into a high-profile crash that killed a Miami girl and seriously injured another. But emails obtained by the Herald show that Rodney Barreto, the chair of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, wondered whether officers messed up when they didn’t test George Pino, the man who crashed the boat, for alcohol.
Barreto posed the question to Col. Roger Young, executive director of the FWC, on Oct. 31, the same day Miami-Dade prosecutors charged Pino, 54, with felony vessel homicide, an offense punishable by up to 15 years in prison. Pino, who is awaiting trial, was initially charged with three misdemeanors in the Sept. 4, 2022 crash, but prosecutors reopened the case after a Herald investigation showed key witnesses weren’t interviewed.
The crash led to the death of 17-year-old Luciana ‘Lucy’ Fernandez and severely injured her Our Lady of Lourdes Academy classmate, Katerina ‘Katy’ Puig, now 20, who is still recovering from her brain injury.
“Roger, we need to understand if we missed anything in this investigation,” Barreto said in his email to the FWC’s top executive. “The [Herald] article makes it sound like we dropped the ball. I’m not passing judgment. I was told that a lot of witnesses didn’t want to cooperate.”
Barreto sent the email to Young after reading a Miami Herald article that day about Pino being charged with the felony. The article detailed how neither FWC investigators nor the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office had followed up with key eyewitnesses on the scene the night of the crash. The witnesses spoke to the Herald and told a different story from what the FWC said in its report leading to the misdemeanor charges.
READ MORE: FWC chair, Miami-Dade State Attorney texted about Pino boat crash, records show
Young’s response to Barreto was not included in the emails obtained through public records requests by the Herald. But, Barreto told the Herald Thursday that several witnesses, particularly the girls who were on Pino’s boat, were hesitant to speak with police due to pressure from their parents. There were 12 teenage girls on the boat; Pino’s daughter, Cecilia, had just turned 18 and had invited 11 of her girlfriends to celebrate on the boating excursion with her parents, George and Cecilia Pino.
“Yes, I was informed that some witnesses were reluctant to speak. I was told that many family members had instructed their children not to cooperate with the investigation, given that they are minors,” Barreto said in a Thursday email to the Herald. “Young reassured me that one of our most qualified investigators was on the scene and noted that it’s not uncommon for new information to emerge over time. This, he emphasized, is often the case in many investigations.”
Young declined to comment on the case when reached by the Herald Friday.
Questions about why there was no blood alcohol test
In the emails to Young, Barreto also expressed uncertainty about what investigators’ options were that night regarding forcing Pino to submit blood to test for alcohol. FWC investigators did not give Pino a blood-alcohol test the night of the crash, saying they did not have probable cause to get a judge’s warrant to force the test on Pino. A Miami-Dade police officer on the scene, however, told FWC investigators that night they could bypass a warrant in emergency circumstances when there are severe injuries, according to his sworn statement filed in court.
Barreto questioned Young about the lack of a blood alcohol test.
“However, it’s my understanding there was no probable cause to ask a judge to issue a demand to take his blood,’’ he wrote to Young in his Oct 31 email. “I know we have worked with the SAO to go to the legislators to have the ability to take blood if a fatality has occurred. If that is the case, will it be overturned by a federal judge?”
Barreto, in his email to the Herald, said Young reiterated there was not enough probable cause that night to force a blood draw from Pino with or without a warrant.
“I expressed concern about why blood was not drawn at the scene. He explained that a Supreme Court ruling prohibits drawing blood without probable cause,” Barreto said. “He reassured me that, in this instance, there was not enough probable cause to present to a judge in order to obtain a warrant.”
The three witnesses who spoke with the Herald for its investigation detailing the missteps of the original criminal investigation were not the passengers on the boat, but boaters who arrived to the scene moments after the crash. Now witnesses in the state’s felony case against Pino, they told the Herald details that contradicted what Pino told FWC investigators.
‘Radio silence’: Deadly boat crash witnesses say they weren’t interviewed by investigators
The three refuted Pino’s claim that the wake from another boat traveling in the opposite direction in the channel caused him to lose control of his 29-foot Robalo and slam into a concrete channel marker in Biscayne Bay. The accident happened around 6:30 p.m. on the Sunday evening of Labor Day weekend; Pino, his wife and the girls were heading back to the Ocean Reef Club in Key Largo after a day anchored off Elliott Key.
Witnesses refute Pino’s claim about another boat
The three witnesses said they did not see a boat coming toward them in the channel. Nor did anyone on Pino’s boat, FWC investigators said in their final report on the crash. Investigators also noted that photographic evidence and GPS data from Pino’s vessel contradict Pino’s claim.
Barreto added in his Oct. 31 email to Young that the FWC requested that Pino be charged with a felony, but said “the State Attorney said no at that time, fearing they didn’t have enough evidence.”
The State Attorney’s Office reopened its investigation last year after a Miami-Dade firefighter at the scene, who had read the Herald articles about the new witnesses, came forward and said he observed Pino showing signs of intoxication that day. Pino had told William Thompson, the lead FWC investigator on the scene, that he had “two beers” that day.
The day after the crash, the FWC found a stash of empty booze bottles and cans on Pino’s boat when its officers pulled it from the bay. The boat had capsized; hurtling the 14 people into the bay. Three girls were unconscious when they were pulled from the water — Lucy, who died the next day in the hospital; Katy, then 17, who suffered traumatic brain injury; and Isabella Rodriguez, then 16, who had a brain bleed but has since recovered.
Pino’s attorney, Howard Srebnick, has said the empty booze containers were from five boats tied up that day although he hasn’t said who were on the other boats.
The Herald’s investigation found FWC officers violated their training when they did not give Pino a sobriety test, despite the crash involving serious injuries. Their training manual and a slideshow presentation prepared by the State Attorney’s Office for the FWC list significant injuries and deaths in a boat crash as probable cause for a blood draw in a sobriety test.
READ MORE: How investigators, prosecutors bungled probe into boat crash that killed teen girl
Investigators on the scene knew that four of the 14 people on the boat were airlifted as trauma alert patients by Miami-Dade Fire Rescue, including Lucy.
The FWC also could have contacted the State Attorney’s Office, which has a prosecutor on call 24/7 to help officers get a search warrant, arrest warrants and court orders in these types of cases. In fact, the second page of a State Attorney Office’s slideshow for the FWC on vessel homicides gives the hotline number for the prosecutors. The FWC didn’t call.
In September 2023, a month after the final report ruled out alcohol as a factor in the crash, Barreto asked Young about the laws surrounding mandatory blood tests in Florida.
“[I]s this something we should revisit in Florida?” he said in another email to Young. “...Maybe there is a way to pass something that would meet the judges approval.”
Young cited a U.S. Supreme Court case in which the court found the metabolism of blood alcohol content is not an “exigent circumstance,” or an emergency exception to obtaining a warrant. The court, however, left the door open on other drunk driving cases having valid emergency exceptions.
The training put together by the State Attorney’s Office for the FWC lists exigent circumstances as one of three ways to get a blood draw. (Voluntary consent or a warrant are the other two.) Law enforcement can cite exigent circumstances — usually an emergency like a death or serious injury — to bypass getting a warrant.
“Pino got the break of his life that night. He should have had blood drawn,” said Joel Denaro, attorney for Lucy’s parents, Melissa and Andres Fernandez.
Videos from Miami-Dade officers show chaos at scene
The Herald also obtained body camera footage from five Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office deputies who were on scene that day evening — and who ferried Pino and some of the injured girls to a triage area at Elliott Key.
More than an hour of footage was from the camera of Detective John Dalton, a veteran Miami-Dade officer who had been a traffic homicide investigator for four years. In February, during a deposition, Dalton told Pino’s attorneys he spoke to “a couple of the FWC guys” about performing a sobriety test on Pino that night.
His video was mostly muted, but captured the strobing police lights and tumultuous scene as first responders rescued girls.
At one point, Dalton is seen interacting with Pino — and gesturing and speaking to FWC officers Hanna Hayden, Julien Gazzola, Keith Hernandez and Jess Whitt. The footage from those officers’ body cameras was deleted after they classified it as “incidental,” not criminal, when they uploaded it into the FWC’s computer system, the agency says.
“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.
The Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office, however, retained the footage. Prosecutors provided the videos to Pino’s attorneys in discovery in May, days after the Herald reported about Dalton’s interview.
While speaking to Pino’s attorneys, Dalton noted that lead FWC investigator William Thompson was interviewing Pino at a nearby picnic table on Elliott Key.
“...Obviously, you can do a blood draw,” Dalton said he told one of the FWC officers. “I mean, [Pino’s] involved in a crash that has potential for a fatality or serious bodily injury. You can force a blood draw on him with a warrant. And you can take one right now, with exigent circumstances. You have fire-rescue here. It’s something you might be able to do right now.”
In another video from Miami-Dade Marine Patrol deputy German Alech, the veteran officer ferried Pino and two of the injured girls to Elliott Key.
While Pino was seated in front of the center console of the boat, one of the teens was seated next to Alech, and another was lying on a stretcher in the back of the boat. The seated girl had a broken left arm, dislocated shoulder and a noticeable bump on her head, while the girl on the stretcher had a knee injury, although paramedics were concerned about a possible neck injury.
Pino is only seen a few times on the footage, most significantly when he tries to speak with the girl sitting with Alech. Another officer on the boat, FWC’s Keith Hernandez, is seen telling Pino to stop talking to her and to sit down.
This story was originally published July 25, 2025 at 5:06 PM with the headline "FWC chair questions why no sobriety test of Pino in fatal boat crash, emails show."
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