The grief-stricken widow of a Manhattan finance honcho who was struck and killed by a speedboat while snorkeling in Turks and Caicos has slapped two resorts with a $25 million negligence claim, according to a Brooklyn federal lawsuit.
Mark Wiley Lane, a former managing partner at Lazard Capital Markets, was on holiday with his wife, Lisa Craig, and their four children in March 2012 when he asked a concierge at the Veranda Hotel for a good place to snorkel, according to the suit.
The employee recommended a spot and provided gear, the suit states.
Along with his then 8-year-old son, Trevor, Lane began wading in the water when he suddenly saw a boat careening towards them at high speed, the suit states.
The panicked father managed to push his boy out of the way but was struck by the boat as it towed passengers from a neighboring Sandals Resort who were inner tubing in the area.
As his hysterical family looked on from the beach, the severely injured dad was rushed to a nearby hospital where he was pronounced dead two hours later, according to the suit.
“Following an autopsy, the cause of death was determined to be massive blunt force trauma to the left upper extremity, head and neck,” the suit states.
Craig’s suit claims that Veranda officials should have known that the area was treacherous because another swimmer was struck and killed by a speedboat there in 2006.
The suit also argues that Sandals was responsible for the horrific accident because the speedboat driver was not properly trained to navigate the area.
Lane and Craig lived in a Park Slope townhouse with their kids and were active in their community. The couple once donated a five-figure sum to a Prospect Park charity.
A Wall Street veteran, Lane, 44, worked at Merrill Lynch, UBS, and Deutsche Bank before becoming head of fixed income trading at Lazard.
He took off several years from his finance work to help raise their kids and had just joined Lazard before the accident.
He met Craig while working at Salomon Brothers and they married in 1997.
A Sandals rep declined to comment, saying they hadn’t seen the lawsuit. The Veranda Hotel has since changed ownership.