Jury watches heartbreaking video of teen dancing with friends before boat crashes, kills her

A jury was shown a heart-wrenching video of a 17-year-old boat crash victim singing and dancing with friends before she died — as closing arguments in Florida real estate developer George Pino’s trial kicked off Monday.

Pino, 55, was hosting 12 teen girls for his daughter Carolina’s 18th birthday on his 29-foot boat when they crashed in Biscayne Bay on Sept. 4, 2022.

Pino allegedly drove the boat at 47 miles per hour into a channel marker – killing 17-year-old passenger Luciana “Lucy” Fernandez, according to cops and prosecutor Laura Adams.

Earlier that day, Fernandez and her friends, clad in swimsuits and sunglasses, were seen jumping around and belting the lyrics to Billy Joel’s “Uptown Girl” in a video taken on the boat.

The father and well-known Doral real estate broker is facing second-degree manslaughter and vessel homicide charges over his alleged involvement in the crash that killed Fernandez and left Katerina Puig, who was then 18, with permanent and debilitating injuries. He has pleaded not guilty.

Adams told the jury Pino was more concerned with being “the cool dad” than with the safety of the passengers, which included his wife, Cecilia.

“[Pino] was going full throttle with all these teenagers on board who have been consuming alcohol – as fast as he can through this narrow channel,” Adams said during the closing argument.

Furthermore, “he decides to travel down the wrong side of the channel,” the prosecutor said.

“You sure as heck weren’t watching out for that neon green channel marker that you knew was there and, because of that inattention, his boat wound up upside down under the water,” Adams said of Pino, who had allegedly captained the same route many times before that fateful day.

The force of the crash tore a large hole in the side of the boat and threw all of the passengers into the water. Eleven people were injured and six were taken to the hospital.

Fernandez, who was reportedly trapped underneath the boat after it crashed, died from drowning-related injuries in the hospital about 12 hours later.

“Because he was operating in such complete disregard for the kids on his boat, Lucy winds up like this in the hospital,” the attorney continued, and flashed a chilling photo of Fernandez in a hospital bed.

“Nobody and no one is responsible for the death of Lucy Fernandez except for that man right there – he is the reason why she is dead,” Adams continued, pointing to Pino, who was seen inaudibly murmuring to himself, taking notes and staring blankly ahead throughout the closing statement.

Adams claimed that Pino, who was not sobriety tested immediately after the incident, was likely lying about having “two beers” while on the boat, as he later told investigators.

“He lied over and over again about what happened. Why? To shift the blame off of himself and in an avoidance of accountability,” the prosecutor said. “Just as he wasn’t exactly truthful about how the crash happened, perhaps he wasn’t as exactly truthful about how much he had to drink.”

A day after the crash, investigators found a total of 61 alcohol bottles and cans on the boat, the Miami Herald reported in July 2025.

Pino “wasn’t thinking about the well-being of his passengers – he wasn’t thinking about the well-being of his own wife and daughter,” Adams slammed.

“He was too wrapped up in trying to be the cool dad on the fast boat.”

Pino’s defense attorney, Howard Srebnick, argued that the state had failed to prove that his client had acted in a reckless, flagrant or gross nature while driving the boat – instead, he simply committed “a human error,” Srebnick said.

“He may not have looked up in time to see the marker…that does not make him a criminal.”

The defense attorney also insisted that his client wasn’t drunk at the time of the crash.

“Not a single person has said that George Pino was in any way impaired by alcohol,” Srebnick said, adding that Pino lost consciousness after the wreck, when he “hit his face on the floor of the boat and the back of his head hit the boat.”

The resulting “traumatic brain injury” and “amnesia” is why Pino mixed up details of the crash during a subsequent interview with detectives – not because he was lying, per the state’s argument, the attorney continued.

Srebnick also slammed Adams’ logic that Pino was trying to be a “cool dad” by driving the boat fast.

“Every single witness who testified that was on the boat…felt the speed was safe. They’d been on his boat before, they felt nothing different, nothing unusual about how Mr. Pino was operating this vessel.

“He wasn’t drag racing, he wasn’t doing donuts in the water…he was not trying to be the ‘cool dad.’ I don’t know where that came from,” he said. “Nobody on the boat asked George to slow down.”

The vessel “was traveling in a straight line with a speed that [the boat] is designed to travel, in a zone where there’s no speed limit,” Srebnick said.

“If George had not hit the piling, nothing bad would have happened. The conditions were ideal…there was no oncoming boat traffic – it was a wide open bay. The speed had nothing to do with the injuries…with the crash,” he insisted.

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Jury watches heartbreaking video of teen dancing with friends before boat crashes, kills her

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Jury watches heartbreaking video of teen dancing with friends before boat crashes, kills her

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