Two years after his 30-foot motorboat fatally rammed a Bayliner half its size in New York Harbor, a private equities firm director today pleaded not guilty to homicide and drunken boating charges.
Richard Aquilone, 43, of Jersey City, is blaming a third vessel — a Shark sightseeing boat — for cutting him off and raising a huge wake, making it impossible to see the 17-foot Bayliner of physical therapist Jijo Puthuvamkunnath.
The therapist died at age 30, weeks before his wedding.
Prosecutors have said that hours after the accident, Aquilone’s blood alcohol level was .06 — below the legal limit of .08 for intoxication but enough to support a charge of operating a vessel while under the influence of alcohol.
Aquilone, a father of three, has also been charged with criminally negligent homicide and vehicular manslaughter and assault.
Difficulties in obtaining and downloading information from Aquilone’s GPS delayed until recently prosecutors’ ability to pinpoint his vessel’s actions.
“I’m surprised we’re here 26 months later,” defense lawyer Marc Agnifilo, said after his client’s arraignment this morning in Manhattan Supreme Court.
“I don’t believe he committed a crime. The Shark boat does cut him off. There’s a wake. The struck vessel is low in the water. He just couldn’t see it,” the lawyer said.
It’s Aquilone who immediately calls the Coast Guard and assists at the scene, and law enforcement had no qualms about letting Aquilone pilot the boat home with his three kids aboard, the lawyer said.
“The law enforcement people believe unequivocally that he’s fine,” the lawyer said.
Aquilone, a managing director with Spurs Capital, told cops he’d only had a couple glasses of wine hours prior to the accident, the lawyer added.
“I powered down to let the Shark pass in front of me,” Aquilone told cops in police statements released after the arraignment.
“After the Shark passed, I powered up again and rode into the wake of the Shark. My bow came up and as soon as I went over the wake, I came down on the boat with three people on board,” he added. “I didn’t see the other boat before.”
On board the victim craft, “I saw one man bleeding from the head and two people were sitting up,” he remembered to cops.
The victim family has sued the equities honcho, who has in turn sued the Shark boat operators, Circle Line — whose officials have denied responsibility for the crash.