Pino pleads not guilty to vessel homicide charge in boat crash that kills Lourdes girl
Doral real estate broker George Pino pleaded not guilty Thursday morning to one count of vessel homicide in the crash where he slammed his boat into a channel marker in Biscayne Bay, killing a 17-year-old girl from Our Lady of Lourdes Academy.
Pino attended the proceeding on Zoom but will have to appear in court next week. Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Marisa Tinkler Mendez is presiding over the case.
The not guilty plea stemmed from the Miami-Dade State Attorney's Office reversing course, dropping the three misdemeanor careless boating counts that carried a maximum sentence of 60 days in jail and a $500 fine and instead charging Pino with felony vessel homicide in the crash, which left another Lourdes student with severe brain injuries. If convicted, Pino could face up to 15 years in prison.
READ MORE: George Pino charged with vessel homicide in crash that killed a girl. What does that mean?
The new charge, filed Oct. 31, came more than a year after prosecutors charged him with the misdemeanors based mostly on a Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission report of the Sept. 4, 2022, boat crash. That report concluded alcohol wasn't a factor in the Labor Day weekend crash — despite investigators finding 61 empty booze bottles and cans on Pino's boat when they pulled it from the water the next day.
Body camera footage from the night of the crash showed Pino telling an FWC officer that he had "two beers" as the reason why he didn't voluntarily submit blood to test for alcohol.
That contradicts the FWC's final report, in which the lead investigator stated Pino declined the blood-alcohol sobriety test because his attorney wasn't present.
The families of 17-year-old Luciana 'Lucy' Fernandez, the teen who died as a result of the crash, and Katerina Puig, her classmate at Our Lady of Lourdes Academy who was permanently disabled in the crash, were outraged at the minor charges against the Doral businessman.
They accused the State Attorney's Office and FWC of not conducting a thorough investigation.
The FWC report says the reason Pino gave for losing control of his 29-foot Robalo boat and crashing into the fixed concrete channel marker was because of a wake from a larger boat coming the opposite direction.
But the report notes that no witnesses from that day, including the 13 other people on his boat, saw the boat Pino described. Photographic evidence from the area also casts doubt on there being another boat, as does data from the GPS unit on Pino's boat.
New witness came forward
Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle's office decided to charge Pino with vessel homicide largely based on a new witness coming forward, a Miami-Dade firefighter on the scene the night of the crash.
Matthew Smiley, the firefighter, told prosecutors Pino seemed intoxicated when he pulled him from the water, sources say.
Smiley came forward after reading two s in the Herald over the summer that reported how investigators never followed up with several boaters who were on the scene — in two instances, performing CPR on the victims before first reponders arrived — in the immediate aftermath of the crash.
After Smiley gave a statement to prosecutors, they reexamined the case, resulting in the new felony charge.
Birthday celebration for their daughter
Pino, 54, who lives in Galloway Glen in Kendall and is president of State Street Realty, a Doral real estate agency, was piloting 12 teenage girls and his wife back to their second home at the gated Ocean Reef Club in Key Largo.
The group was celebrating Pino's daughter Cecilia's 18th birthday on Elliott Key, an island popular with boaters in Biscayne National Park.
They had planned to host a birthday dinner that night in Ocean Reef with their daughter and her 11 friends on the boat from Lourdes, Carrollton School of the Sacred Heart in Coconut Grove and Westminster Christian School in Palmetto Bay.
But at 6:37 p.m. Sunday of the 2022 Labor Day weekend, Pino crashed his boat into Channel Marker 15, the very last marker in the channel in an area known as Cutter Bank.
He was traveling at nearly 50 mph, according to the FWC report.
The crash's impact shredded the hull and hurtled all the passengers into the bay.
All of the boat's occupants had injuries, mostly minor. But Lucy Fernandez, Katernina Puig, and Isabella Rodriguez sustained serious head injuries.
Isabella Rodriguez has since made a full recovery, but Katerina Puig, now 19, faces a lifetime of medical care. Lucy Fernandez died the day after the crash at HCA Kendall Hospital.
