Injured girl’s family ‘outraged’ at minor charges in fatal Florida Keys boat crash probe

A boat crash in Biscayne Bay over last year’s Labor Day weekend killed a 17-year-old girl and permanently disabled another teen, and the surviving girl’s family is “outraged” that the vessel’s operator is being charged with only two counts of careless boating, misdemeanors they are calling “a slap on the wrist.”

The parents of Katerina Puig, the now-18-year-old girl who suffered serious permanent injuries when the boat she was on with 13 other people, including 11 other teen-age girls, crashed into a channel marker near Ocean Reef Club in the Upper Keys, saw investigators’ final report last week.

Their attorneys told the Miami Herald on Friday that the document, which has not been released, states 61 empty alcoholic beverages were found in a trash can on the boat, as well as a half-empty bottle of liquor. They also say his 29-foot Robalo boat was cruising at about 50 mph through an Intracoastal Waterway channel before smacking into the fixed Marker 15.

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