The owner and captain of a scuba charter-boat in Florida has been sentenced to more than eight years in prison following the gruesome death of diver Mollie Ghiz-Flynn five years ago.
In March this year a federal jury had found 50-year-old Dustin McCabe guilty of seaman’s manslaughter (both as the vessel’s owner and captain) and lying to the US Coast Guard, as well as fraudulently obtaining Covid-19 pandemic relief funds.
The sentencing had been delayed but US District Judge Aileen M Cannon has now directed that McCabe should spend 100 months in prison.
The term was said to exceed the advisory sentencing guidelines because of what the judge called McCabe’s reckless conduct and the horrific circumstances and nature of the diver’s death.
During the trial a federal jury in Fort Pierce had heard that McCabe, from Ocala, Florida, had bought a 32-year-old 15m twin-engined fishing boat called Southern Comfort in March 2020.
He had told the Coast Guard that the vessel was for personal use, even though he planned to use it for business, taking divers out to dive-sites under the operating name Florida Scuba Charters.
He had refitted the boat, removing its main deck engine controls in the process. At the time there was a Palm Beach County ban on diving expeditions and other water-based activities because of the coronavirus outbreak, but this had been ignored.
Engaged in neutral
On the boat’s first outing on 28 March the port-side engine had unexpectedly engaged while in neutral and the propeller had almost injured one of the divers. She had been sucked towards it but managed to insert her speargun between the blades and push herself clear.
Steering was lost as the rudder was damaged and the boat ran aground. Following the incident the divers had warned McCabe not to take the boat out again in the state it was in.
McCabe had however failed to report the incident, and had made no attempt to carry out repairs before the next day or to warn the next group of divers he took out, who included married couple Sean Flynn and 37-year-old Mollie Ghiz-Flynn from Melbourne, Florida.
The couple had resurfaced after their first dive at Breaker’s Reef near Palm Beach Inlet and were waved over from Southern Comfort to be picked up.
As they tried to board the boat, however, McCabe put it into reverse, sucking the two divers beneath it and causing Ghiz-Flynn to get her leg stuck in the same moving propeller that had caused the problem the previous day.
Her legs were seriously injured by the blades while at the same time she was being held beneath the surface. Flynn was unable to release his wife and it took two people from the boat to eventually pull her free, by which time she had drowned.
Accused of negligent operation of a boat resulting in a fatality, and unable to operate, McCabe had tried to apply for two loans from a Covid-19 federal relief programme for small businesses, falsely claiming that his business was still operational and presenting faked tax documents in support of his claim.
Flynn, who was uninjured but left traumatised by the incident, had filed a lawsuit against Florida Scuba Charters under the state’s Wrongful Death Act, as reported on Divernet. The sentencing was announced by the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida.
Interesting articles. Makes you think about things around you.