Police found the lifeless body of a man thrown into the ocean after a high-speed boat crash off Long Island this morning.
Suffolk County police say Christopher Mannino’s body was recovered around 1:30 p.m. under the Robert Moses Bridge, after a desperate nine-hour search.
Mannino, 39, of West Islip, was a passenger on the Silver Bullet, a 38-foot fishing boat, when a 25-foot Skater speedboat smashed into its side at around 4:50 am in the Great South Bay.
The catamaran pilot, Brian Andreski, 26, was charged with boating while intoxicated.
The sportfishing boat owner’s son Richard Leigh, Jr., 42, had invited Mannino along for the annual Bay Shore Mako fishing tournament, according to Leigh’s mother Barbara, 73.
He was one of five passengers on the Silver Bullet, a 1967 Hatteras model boat. The other four people are safe with minor injuries, police said.
When investigators arrived at the scene of the crash, they found the Skater upside down and sinking, with a gaping hole on its left side, and the Silver Bullet nearly sinking and severely damaged, said a Suffolk County PD spokeswoman.
The speedboat’s pilot and passenger were thrown into the water. They suffered non-life-threatening injuries. Andreski was hospitalized.
Leigh’s son Richard, 42, was captaining the boat at the time of the crash, and went later in the day to join the search party, his mother said.
The Leigh family took the Silver Bullet to fishing tournaments every year, and sometimes had to help out struggling swimmers and boaters, Barbara Leigh said.
“Richie helped people. Twice people were in trouble and we brought them onto our boat,” she said. “This time it didn’t work out that way.”