PINELLAS COUNTY, Fla. — The same captain and the same boat that crashed into the Clearwater Ferry Sunday night, killing one man and injuring multiple people, was cited by authorities in another Pinellas County boat crash involving multiple injuries years earlier.
The ABC Action News I-team obtained pictures and reports from that 2019 crash, which resembled the recent one in some ways.
Watch full report from Adam Walser:
“This big yacht came through the boat”
It was a chaotic scene Sunday night after a power boat operated by Jeffry Knight slammed into the Clearwater Ferry carrying 44 people.
Shaken passengers recall the terrifying moment.
“I looked back behind us and this big yacht just came through the boat,” one passenger recalled.
A Clearwater city camera captured the incident.
Knight’s boat can be seen coming up from behind and colliding with the ferry.
“We can’t even understand how fast they were going. How was that even logically possible,” said ferry passenger Brenda Alvarez, who is 31-weeks pregnant.
Rescue workers scrambled to help the crash victims.
“We had six trauma alerts. We had two people flown by helicopter to local hospitals,” said Clearwater Police Public Information Officer Rob Shaw.
Jose Castro, a 41-year-old father of two, died from the crash.
Knight has not been charged in connection with that accident
Same boat, same captain, different crash
But the I-Team has confirmed that Knight was cited for another crash involving that same boat, which crashed into a different pontoon boat, causing serious injuries.
“It’s a vessel vs. pontoon near the Skyway with one injured subject being brought into Maximo,” the Florida Wildlife Commission dispatcher said in a radio transmission just after 2 p.m. on Monday, September 2nd, 2019.
It was Labor Day, and Jeffry Knight was behind the wheel of his 37-foot-long powerboat.
The boat was powered by three 350-horsepower engines, with more than 1,000 horsepower combined.
Near the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, Knight’s boat struck a 21-foot-long pontoon boat with a single 90-horsepower outboard engine, which Freedom Boat Club owned.
“There are going to be two more subjects who are injured. EMS is currently 10-51. Dispatch believes they’ll be transported to Bayfront,” the dispatcher alerted officers in another radio transmission.
According to the FWC incident report obtained by the I-Team, Knight’s boat was traveling at an estimated speed of 45 miles an hour when it hit the pontoon boat, which witnesses say was going 8 miles an hour.
The report says the pontoon boat operator was a medical doctor who performed first aid on the injured passengers.
A passenger from Knight’s boat reportedly boarded that vessel and drove it to Maximo Park, where ambulances were waiting to take the three victims to Bayfront Hospital in St. Petersburg.
“Patient number one is a female victim, trauma alert. Has head injury and lacerations,” a FWC officer on the scene reported back to the dispatcher. “Patient number two is another female trauma alert with abdominal injuries.”
The third passenger had a leg injury, according to the report.
Knight said he looked down at GPS
Records show Knight purchased his boat in 2018 for more than $381,000.
It had far less damage than the pontoon boat it struck.
Knight submitted a handwritten statement to FWC investigators: “I looked down to check my GPS when the other boat came across my bow.”
FWC charged him 28 days after the crash with careless operation of a vessel and collision with a vessel.
We asked retired Tampa Police Department Marine Officer Randy Lopez to review the report.
He owns and operates Blue Line Boating, a charter boating and boater safety training business.
During Lopez’s 33-year law enforcement career, he investigated hundreds of boat crashes.
The FWC report from the 2019 crash concluded “Knight was at fault for this accident”.
“The bigger boat is to give way. He should have slowed and gone behind him,” Lopez said, looking at the diagram provided by investigators as part of the report.
Lopez said the report indicated Knight violated navigation rules and didn’t have a lookout.
“Look at the disparity in the size and the makeup of the vessels,” Lopez said. “Pontoons sit lower in the water. That's by design. They're slower moving boats. That boat going 45 miles an hour, it’s gonna run right up on top of it.”
Lopez reviewed the FWC photos, which showed significant damage to the pontoon boat, including crushed railing on the side of the impact.
“You look at the damage to the pontoon, you go ‘I'm surprised nobody got killed’ because when that boat came up, had somebody been sitting right there or standing right there, they’d have taken that boat full force,” Lopez said.
FWC charges dropped, civil case settled
The 2019 charges against Knight were dismissed by a judge months later.
The injured passengers sued Knight and a limited liability company formed by Knight which held the title to the boat.
The lawsuit alleges Knight violated navigational rules “by failing to keep a proper lookout, being inattentive, and operating the vessel in a careless manner, including by taking his eyes off of his direction of travel by looking down at his GPS immediately prior to impacting the vessel.”
The civil case was settled for an undisclosed amount.
Lopez says the events in the 2019 crash and Sunday’s crash show the importance of being aware of one's surroundings and operating boats safely at all times.
“The boats that we have out here today they’re fast, they’re big, they’re heavy, they run. They'll run over things and they will cause damage,” Lopez said.
We reached out to Knight’s attorney Kevin Hayslett, who said he didn’t wish to comment on the 2019 charges, except to emphasize that the charges against Knight were dismissed.
If you have a story you think the I-Team should investigate, email us at adam@abcactionnews.com.
