Tugboat mate in fatal Delaware River collision sentenced to a year

Kris Alingod - AHN News Contributor

Philadelphia, PA, United States (AHN) - The tugboat operator responsible for a deadly collision between a barge and a tourist vessel last year on the Delaware River has been sentenced to one year in prison, the U.S. attorney in the eastern district of Pennsylvania announced Tuesday.
Matthew Devlin will spend a year and a day in prison beginning Jan. 5 next year under a plea agreement with prosecutors. The 35-year-old admitted to one count of misconduct of a ship operator causing death, a charge under a federal statute applicable to involuntary manslaughter.
Prosecutors had proposed a sentence between 37 and 46 months. However, U.S. District Court Judge Legrome Davis decided on a more lenient punishment.
Devlin, who was distracted by a family emergency while navigating the vessel Caribbean Sea on the day of the accident, previously agreed to the permanent revocation of his Coast Guard-issued license as mate.
The Caribbean Sea was pulling an unmanned 250-foot barge, the Resource, on July 7, 2010, when the barge crashed into a stranded tour boat.
The tourist vessel, an amphibious boat operated by Ride the Ducks, was carrying 35 passengers and two crew members. Two Hungarian students, Szablcs Prem, 20, and Dora Schwendtner, 16, drowned.
The accident took place in shallow water near Penn's Landing while the "duck boat" was stationary due to an engine problem.
The National Transportation Safety Board concluded that Devlin was on his cell phone when the collision took place. He was operating the Caribbean Sea from the lower wheelhouse, where visibility was limited, instead of the upper wheelhouse, from where the captain had told him to pilot the tugboat.
In addition, Devlin did not ask any of his fellow crew members to serve as lookout. The Caribbean Sea, which is owned by K-Sea Transportation, was manned by five crew members at the time.
The NTSB found that Devlin made 15 outbound calls and received six calls between noon on the day of the accident until 2:37 p.m., the time of the crash. The calls were to his mother's home phone and cell phone, his wife's cell phone and his father's cell phone. They were made in violation of company policy prohibiting the use of personal cell phones while on watch.
According to local reports, Devlin testified tearfully in court that the calls were about complications during his son's eye surgery.
The accident prompted Ride the Ducks, the nation's largest amphibious tour operator, to temporarily suspend operations in Philadelphia. The company and K-Sea Transportation are the focus of a wrongful death complaint from families of the victims who cite safety failures and a lack of emergency procedures.
The NTSB investigation had also faulted the duck boat captain for failing to follow company policy requiring him to alert the Coast Guard immediately about problems with steering, propulsion or passenger injury. Moreover, he did not follow emergency procedures that would have forced passengers to don life jackets once the tour boat was stranded in the water.

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