Pair plead guilty in 2010 Florida Keys dive death case

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mselenaous

Island girl
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Key Largo, FL... Dive Capital of the World
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I just don't log dives
This is long overdue resolution to this Key Largo tragedy of Dec 2011.


[The owners of a now-defunct Key Largo dive shop — who maintained their vessel in such shoddy condition that it capsized and killed one person — pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter.
The guilty plea came after Christopher Jones and Alison Gracey were on the lam for more than a decade. Jones, 57, and Gracey, 54, owned The Key Largo Scuba Shack. The business operated charter scuba diving trips in the Florida Keys from approximately June 2010 to December 2011. Their main charter boat was a 24-foot vessel named the M/V Get Wet.
On Dec. 18, 2011, the M/V Get Wet departed the pier for a scuba trip with two crew members and six passengers, according to the U.S. Attorneys Office in Miami. During the vessel’s first dive stop, the sea conditions went from calm to choppy and the boat operator noticed that the bilge pump had failed. As the divers reboarded the boat after the dive, the vessel began taking on water, rolled heavily, capsized and quickly sank about 30 feet to the ocean floor. During its descent, a 300-pound bench that was not properly secured to the vessel’s deck detached. Made of buoyant material, the bench sprang toward the ocean’s surface, as the vessel itself sank. The two large and heavy objects collided, pinning one passenger’s legs against the vessel’s windshield. The passenger was trapped and drowned, federal prosecutors said.

Once salvaged, Coast Guard experts inspected the M/V Get Wet and found serious deficiencies. Not one of the vessel’s bilge compartments — the engine spaces below the ship’s deck — was watertight. The aft-most bilge space, called the lazarette, was covered by a deck plate with holes for 30 bolts, of which 22 were missing and eight were loose. The wood at the bottom of the 300-pound bench was rotten, and the screws intended to secure it to the deck were too small. Beneath the deck, holes that allowed water to flow between the various bilge compartments compromised all the bulkheads. A bilge pump had been disassembled and re-assembled incorrectly, according to the U.S. Attorneys Office.
In addition, a criminal investigation following the death of the diver revealed that Jones and Gracey knew before the tragedy that the vessel needed repairs. Jones and Gracey continued operating the M/V Get Wet despite inspections and the United States Coast Guard notified Jones and Gracey that the vessel needed repairs, including securing the center engine bench cover to the deck and making repairs below the deck to make sure that the bulkhead areas were watertight.
The dive operation’s employees repeatedly informed Jones that the M/V Get Wet flooded dangerously. The deck plates were barely attached, and the engine bench cover would rock back and forth, prosecutors said. The M/V Get Wet broke down repeatedly and equipment on the boat failed, including pumps intended to de-water the vessel.


On one voyage with Gracey aboard as dive master, the M/V Get Wet almost sank, according to federal prosecutors. In the two months before the boat sank, a marine salvor towed the M/V Get Wet to shore on three separate occasions.
Shortly after the diver’s death, Jones and Gracey fled the United States and spent more than 10 years moving from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, fighting extradition each time law enforcement located them. In 2021, they left France for Spain, where Spanish authorities took them into custody based on an Interpol Red Notice. In January 2022, Jones and Gracey were extradited to the United States to face federal charges in Southern District of Florida, according to the U.S. Attorneys Office.
Sentencing is set for at 1:30 p.m. on Aug. 18 in the Key West Federal Courthouse before Judge James Lawrence King. Each defendant faces up to eight years in federal prison.
Juan Antonio Gonzalez, United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, and Zinnia James, Special Agent in Charge, Southeast Region, U.S. Coast Guard Investigative Service (CGIS), announced the guilty pleas.
The U.S. Coast Guard Investigative Service investigated the case. The U.S. Department of Justice, Office of International Affairs, provided invaluable assistance, pursuing the extradition of the defendants from multiple countries. The U.S. Marshal’s Service also assisted by transporting the defendants from Spain to Florida.
Former Assistant U.S. Attorney Jaime Raich worked on the investigation and initially prosecuted this case, which Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Watts-FitzGerald is now handling.]
 
Original discussion thread here:

 
Finally. I hadn't seen as much detail about the accident or boat history before. It really brings home the negligence, and bizarre mechanics of the accident. At least one small residual injury to the survivors seems about to be addressed.

Some issue of watertight bulkheads was made, I guess in the investigative report. Would a boat like this normally be expected to have watertight bulkheads?

Are the details of the bonds and forfeitures known? Who paid the bonds they skipped on? Wonder if anyone else may be charged - by the Dutch or French? - in conjunction with the escapes or evasions?
 
wow, tragic, alarming, fascinating. I wonder between the signs of something going wrong and the boat flipping how much time passed and whether it was evident that the boat was likely to sink or it was a complete surprise. I wonder because I'd like to know if it's a situation one could recognize and flee or not.
 
I've wondered that as well. Hard to know what the exact sequence was, and what everyone was trying to do.
 
I wonder between the signs of something going wrong and the boat flipping how much time passed
The boat did not flip, but the time between realizing there was a problem and sinking was mere seconds. Water has mass and ergo inertia. When they realized how deep the water was in the boat, the captain acted in haste and took off quickly. Unfortunately, the water didn't move with the boat, and it all accumulated at the rear as the boat moved forward, causing the aft to pitch downward, which is what sank it. At that point, the unsecured lid to the engine compartment swung up pinning two divers. One was resuscitated, while the single mom died.
 
The boat did not flip, but the time between realizing there was a problem and sinking was mere seconds.
It capsized. Vernacular aside, I guess seeing or visualizing the event is the only way I'd get a sense for how something like that can unfold and how quickly. I've only seen footage of a few boats sinking and it always seemed like there was time to abandon.

Here's footage of a different boat capsizing while moving forward. Although different scenario, it is quick, little to no time for a passenger to recognize the situation and safely gtfo.

 
It capsized. Vernacular aside, I guess seeing or visualizing the event is the only way I'd get a sense for how something like that can unfold and how quickly. I've only seen footage of a few boats sinking and it always seemed like there was time to abandon.
I don't remember it capsizing. I believe it went down stern first and incredibly quickly. They had just gotten up from their dive and were still stowing gear. No, I wasn't present at the scene, but I lived in Key Largo and remember hearing from the captain as well as from those who did see it. The wreck was on the hard for years at the marina after it was towed in. There was so much water already below decks, that it would have been hard for the boat to flip or capsize. The captain left the dock knowing he had no working bilge pump, but the owners refused to take action and fix it. While it wasn't her fault, the instructor on board never taught again as far as I know.
 
Small boats can sink in a few seconds if the right conditions exist. We lost one of our liberty boats in Haifa and 21 Sailors drowned. Most of those were trapped below deck. It was pulling up to the fantail and one second it was there, the next it was gone. Talk about a mess. We managed to get 84 out of the water and over half of those were transported to area hospitals. No matter how good of a swimmer you might be, always wear some sort of flotation if you can as things can go sideways in an instant.
 
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