Boat captain charged after New York Harbor capsizing kills mother, infant

A boat carrying 14 people capsized near Liberty Island in New York Harbor, killing a 27-year-old mother and her 5-month-old daughter and forcing rescuers into the water near the Statue of Liberty. Twelve people were pulled out alive after FDNY, NYPD Harbor Unit and Coast Guard crews raced to the scene.

Police identified the operator as Manuel Hernandez, 46, of Manhattan, and said he was arrested early Sunday morning, around 2:30 a.m. The NYPD charged Hernandez with 13 counts of reckless endangerment as investigators began piecing together how the vessel overturned.

The U.S. Coast Guard said it was looking into the cause of the capsizing and whether the boat was an illegal charter, a question that goes directly to oversight in one of the city’s busiest tourist waterways. If the trip was carrying passengers for hire without proper authorization, it would raise immediate concerns about whether the vessel was operating under the safety rules that govern charter service in New York Harbor.

Police divers found the mother and infant in the water near Liberty Island, but they could not be saved. The quick response from emergency crews helped rescue the other 12 passengers, limiting what could have become an even larger loss of life in the crowded channel off Lower Manhattan.

The case now centers on whether the accident was a single act of bad judgment by the captain or part of a larger lapse in supervision over recreational and commercial boating around the harbor. The death of a mother and her infant has turned the crash into a criminal case and a test of how tightly New York monitors passenger vessels operating in front of its most visible landmark.