Pino to turn himself in after felony boat crash charge, but he won’t have to post bond
Miami-Dade real estate developer George Pino will have to turn himself in to be booked into jail on a felony vessel homicide charge by next week, but won’t have to post bond, customary in felony cases, a judge said Wednesday.
During the morning hearing, prosecutor Laura Adams announced that she wasn’t seeking a change in Pino’s bond status. Pino has been out without a bond since August 2023, when he was charged with three misdemeanors in the September 2022 boat crash that killed a Lourdes student and severely injured another.
“There’s nothing that indicates that he’s a danger to the community or a flight risk,” Adams said.
Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Marisa Tinkler Mendez said she will enter an order outlining that Pino wouldn’t need a bond but would have to turn himself in by Nov. 21. An attorney for the county’s Corrections and Rehabilitation Department was also present during the proceeding.
Miami defense attorney Howard Srebnick, who is representing Pino, suggested the order to prevent “logistical delays not needed in a case like this” as Pino will need to be fingerprinted and photographed due to the felony charge. Adams agreed with the recommendation.
Vessel homicide cases, however, usually carry hefty bonds. In September, a man arrested on a Monroe County warrant and charged with vessel homicide was required to post a $150,000 bond.
If Pino had been arrested two years ago on the vessel homicide charge, he likely would have had a standard bond set, said Michael Band, a longtime attorney and former prosecutor with the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office.
Releasing Pino without a bond now was “not an unreasonable argument,” Band said, because Pino was aware that he was under investigation for two years, and in that time period, he appeared in court and didn’t attempt to flee.
“Is it usual? No,” Band said. “Is it so unusual? I would say... no.”
The Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office last month charged Pino, 54, with the second-degree felony and dropped the original three counts of careless boating in the high-profile Sept. 4, 2022, Biscayne Bay boat crash. The crash led to the death of 17-year-old Luciana Fernandez, permanently disabled Katerina Puig, now 19, and injured several other teens on his boat that day. Pino has pleaded not guilty.
If convicted on the felony charge, Pino could face up to 15 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
READ MORE: Pino pleads not guilty to vessel homicide charge in boat crash that kills Lourdes girl
The original minor charges outraged the families of the two girls most affected because they said he lied about the cause of the crash — he slammed into a fixed channel marker at a high speed — and because more than 60 empty booze containers were found on his 29-foot Robalo the next day.
Pino said that another boat coming at him in the channel caused him to crash; none of the witnesses interviewed supported Pino’s contention, nor did the boat’s GPS data or photographic evidence.
When reached Wednesday, Lucy Fernandez’s family declined to comment on the hearing.
A series of articles in the Miami Herald over the summer revealed the State Attorney’s Office and detectives with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, the state cops that investigate boating deaths, never followed up with several key witnesses who were on the scene immediately after the crash.
New witness comes forward
The State Attorney’s Office changed course in October — more than a year after filing the original misdemeanor charges — after a new witness, a Miami-Dade firefighter on the scene, came forward after reading the Herald’s coverage, saying Pino showed signs of intoxication when he was pulled from the water.
Prosecutors then reevaluated the evidence, including data from the Robalo’s GPS unit, and determined they had enough to argue in court that Pino operated the boat recklessly and caused Luciana Fernandez’s death — hence, the vessel homicide charge.
The fatal crash
Pino, who lives in Galloway Glen in Kendall and is president of State Street Realty, a Doral real estate agency, was piloting 12 teenage girls and his wife back to their second home at the gated Ocean Reef Club in Key Largo. The group was celebrating the 18th birthday of Cecilia Pino, the Pinos’ daughter, on Elliott Key, an island popular with boaters in Biscayne National Park.
The couple had planned to host a birthday dinner that night in Ocean Reef with their daughter and her 11 friends on the boat from Our Lady of Lourdes Academy near Coral Gables, Carrollton School of the Sacred Heart in Coconut Grove and Westminster Christian School in Palmetto Bay. Cecilia attended Carrollton.
But at 6:37 p.m. Sunday of the 2022 Labor Day weekend, Pino crashed his boat into Channel Marker 15, the very last marker in the channel in an area known as Cutter Bank. He was traveling at nearly 50 mph, according to the FWC report. The crash’s impact shredded the boat’s hull and hurtled all the passengers into the bay.
All of the boat’s occupants had injuries, mostly minor. But Lucy Fernandez, Katernina Puig, and Isabella Rodriguez sustained serious head injuries. Isabella Rodriguez has since made a full recovery, but Katerina Puig, now 19, faces a lifetime of medical care due to traumatic brain injury. Lucy Fernandez died the day after the crash at HCA Kendall Hospital.
Despite the witnesses, the GPS data and photographic evidence casting doubt on Pino’s story about another boat, he continued to fight the careless boating charges in court.
No sobriety tests taken on Pino
FWC investigators were also quick to rule out drinking despite the more than 60 empty alcohol bottles and cans found on the boat when it was pulled from the water the day after the crash.
In the FWC’s final report, Investigator William Thompson stated that Pino showed no signs of impairment and that he declined to voluntarily submit blood to test for alcohol because his attorney was not present.
But, footage from Thompson’s body camera recorded the night of the crash shows that wasn’t the reason Pino declined the test. Thompson, after stressing the test was voluntary, asked him if he wanted to submit the blood.
Pino’s final answer, according to the footage, was, “No, I had two beers.”
