A scuba diving instructor has been formally accused of manslaughter in connection with the death of a young woman following a training dive on a shipwreck off the coast of Argentina earlier this year. The incident was reported on Divernet in February.
Diving trainee Sofia Devries, 23, went missing on 16 February. Her body was found by naval divers on the seabed at a depth of about 20m two days later, close to where she had last been seen.
Marcela Pérez Bogado, criminal judge for the city of Puerto Madryn in northern Patagonia, formally opened the criminal investigation on 6 July and approved prosecutors’ provisional allegation of manslaughter.
This signals the formal start of the preparatory investigation stage, during which Chubut Public Prosecutor’s Office continues to produce and collect evidence to determine whether it is appropriate to file charges and request the holding of an oral trial.
The instructor, 26-year-old Thiago Nahuel Pocovi, participated in the court proceedings via a video link from his home in the capital Buenos Aires. His defence lawyer raised no objection to the request to open the investigation, and Pocovi exercised his right to remain silent.
Group of seven
Prosecutors told the court that Sofia Devries, from Villa Ballester in Buenos Aires province, had been part of a group of seven divers led by Pocovi.
Devries’ partner Leonardo Alonso was also part of the group, which was undergoing training on the Hu Shun Yu 809 wreck in Punta Cuevas Historical Park, about 1km offshore in the Golfo Nuevo. The confiscated Chinese fishing vessel had been sunk as an artificial reef to a maximum depth of 34m in 2017.
Visibility had reportedly been “extremely poor” on the day, which made it, according to the prosecution, “impossible to directly supervise the entire group”.
“Reaching the bottom, Sofia Devries and her partner were left without direct supervision,” stated the prosecutors. “Under these circumstances, the young woman began to show signs of distress, removed her regulator and, while her partner attempted to assist her, she ran out of air and drowned.”
Earlier reporting
The incident drew wide attention in Argentina, with national media reporting that the divers had only recently completed their PADI Open Water Diver course, moving straight onto the Advanced OWD course to enable them to extend their permitted depth range from 18 to 30m.
According to an earlier report by La Nación citing judicial sources, while Alonso was having difficulties equalising on descent Pocovi had continued down with Devries and initially waited at the bottom for her partner to join them.
The instructor was then reported to have experienced problems with his own BC and signalled that he would ascend alone while Devries continued to wait for Alonso.
Alonso had come down and, seeing Devries starting to panic, had offered to share air with her, before trying to inflate their BCs to bring them back up to the surface. According to this account he had succeeded only in inflating his own BC and ascended alone. A post mortem examination later indicated that Devries had died by drowning.
Pocovi was said to have made several subsequent attempts to find Devries. Three divers were taken to hospital soon after the incident, with two being treated for decompression illness and the other kept under observation, though they were not individually identified.
The prosecution, which alleges that Pocovi breached safety protocols and regulations governing professional diving instructors, will have to decide whether to ask the court to send the case to trial on the provisional manslaughter charge.
Under Argentina’s penal code, manslaughter applies where a death is caused through recklessness, negligence, incompetence or failure to fulfill a duty of care.
