Boat captain guilty of manslaughter in two deaths

Sean Michael McDonald was found guilty today, 2 Aug., of two counts of manslaughter in the deaths of two people who were killed after his boat collided with their vessel as both boats returned from a Sunday outing at Rum Point in 2019.

Former RCIPS police officer Emmanuel ‘Manny’ Brown, 49, and John Turner, 70, a British resident in Cayman, were killed in the night-time collision on 11 Aug. 2019.

The third person on board, a female passenger, was seriously injured when their boat, a Godfrey Hurricane, and the vessel McDonald was piloting, a 32-foot Scarab called the Pepper Jelly, collided near Harbour House Marina in Prospect.

As well as the two guilty verdicts for manslaughter, Justice Cheryll Richards also found McDonald, 38, guilty of endangering human life or safety through reckless and negligent acts in relation to the injuries the female passenger suffered.

As Richards read out her verdicts over more than an hour and a half, McDonald sat in the dock – for much of the time mopping sweat from his face, or holding his face in his hands.

Relatives of the victims, who have been waiting for an outcome for three years, were also in court to hear the verdicts being delivered.

McDonald had denied the charges and had chosen a judge-alone trial, which began in March this year.

Although he did not give evidence during his trial, McDonald’s statement to police following the collision was submitted as evidence in the case.

In his police statement, the Pepper Jelly captain said had seen no lights of any vessel nearby as he neared the Harbour House Marina channel, and that he did not notice the Godfrey Hurricane until immediately before the collision, when it was about five feet from his boat.

Richards, summarising the case before the court as she delivered her judgment, said McDonald in his statement, had told police that he considered a safe speed to travel at night in North Sound to be 20-25 miles per hour, as there would be buoys and other vessels in the area, and that faster speeds would create a ‘plane’, which would make it difficult to see over the bow of the vessel at night.

GPS data presented during the trial showed that the Pepper Jelly had increased its speed from 35 mph to 50 mph when the collision occurred.

McDonald, who told police he had been a boat captain for 15 years and had bought the Pepper Jelly a year earlier to use to build up a charter business, said the top speed he would operate the boat at would be 40-42 mph, saying that at any higher speed, “it starts to get scary”.

McDonald told police that one of the two passengers on board his boat had been looking out for buoys as they made their way back to shore from Rum Point after sunset. However, the second passenger, in his statement, had said both he and the other person on board were drunk at the time. McDonald, in his police statement, said he was sober, having had just one drink around 3pm that day.

CCTV video, filmed by a camera at Harbour House Marina and displayed in court during the trial, shows the collision. Although in the dark, it’s impossible to see the collision clearly, what is visible is a bright light, or lights, from the Hurricane – a point both the defence and prosecution acknowledged.

The question, however, was whether those lights – so bright in the CCTV footage – could be seen by those on board the Pepper Jelly.

However, Richards, in delivering her verdict, said, “Had the defendant been keeping a proper lookout, he would have seen [the Godfrey Hurricane] approaching to his port side well before the collision, even if the lights of the Hurricane were positioned in such a way as to be difficult to see.

“The speed at which he was travelling would have, on his own account, made it difficult to see above the bow of the boat at night.”

She added that, as was his right, McDonald had chosen not to give evidence in the trial, but she said, “I am sure the true reason for him not giving evidence is he did not have an answer that he thought would stand up to questioning.

“In this case, he chose not to give evidence but chose to call an expert witness to put forward his case.”

Richards said she found the prosecution’s expert, US marine accident investigator Patrick Michael Neal, a more reliable witness than the defence expert, James Crawford, in part because Neal had had time to make a more thorough and timely examination of the wreckage of both vessels.

Neal, in his evidence, had said his examination of the vessels indicated that the Pepper Jelly struck the front of the smaller boat, mounted it and hit the helm, effectively rolling over the Hurricane, and then yawing and changing direction, before capsizing. The Hurricane, after being struck, continued to move through the water before hitting the seawall.

Crawford had told the court that the increase in speed recorded on the GPS tracker was caused by the collision itself, while Neal said the Pepper Jelly had been travelling at 50 mph when it collided with the Hurricane at 7:44pm that night – a speed he described as “reckless”.

Examinations of both boats showed that the Pepper Jelly had been at full throttle, or at full speed, while the Hurricane was at one-third to one-half throttle, the court heard.

Richards said, as an experienced boat captain, McDonald owed a duty of care to other users in the water, and that by approaching a channel at an “unsafe speed given the prevailing circumstances, in particular, the state of visibility”, and by not having a proper lookout, he was in breach of that duty of care, to an criminal extent.

It was noted that there is often a lot of traffic in the area on a Sunday night, as boats return from trips to Rum Point.

She added, “I find that his conduct of navigating that vessel fell far below the standards to be expected of a person in his position, with his experience, and responsibilities. In operating the vessel at the speed at which he did, he did so in a manner which [can] only be described as … rash or negligent, such as to endanger human life.”

Richards called for a social inquiry report for McDonald, and the prosecution indicated it intended to submit victim impact statements from the families of the deceased and the injured victim.

McDonald, who has surrendered his passport, remains on bail until his sentencing, which is scheduled for Monday, 7 Nov.