‘WE’RE GONNA DIE’

Captain of Dive Boat Fire That Killed 34 Found Criminally Negligent

Jerry Boylan was convicted of a charge known colloquially as seaman’s manslaughter after he was the “first to abandon the ship” as an inferno blazed aboard his vessel in 2019.

The former captain of a dive boat that caught fire off the coast of Santa Barbara, California, killing 33 passengers and a crew member trapped by the flames in a bunkroom below deck, was convicted by a federal jury Monday of criminal negligence. Jerry Boylan, 67, was found guilty of one count of misconduct or neglect of ship officer, a charge colloquially known as seaman’s manslaughter that could see him spend a decade behind bars, the Associated Press reported. Boylan was “the first to abandon the ship, the first to jump in the water” after creating the conditions that allowed the fire to turn into an inferno in the early hours of Sept. 2, 2019, Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Faerstein said during closing arguments, according to the Los Angeles Times. Prosecutors also replayed a 24-second video taken by a victim, Patricia Ann Beitzinger, from inside the bunkroom in the minutes before the fire overwhelmed the vessel. “There’s got to be a way out…” one person says, according to a transcript supplied to jurors. Another says: “We’re gonna die.”