Two New Jersey men who owned a 25-foot boat that capsized in the Hudson River, killing two people, including a 7-year-old boy, were arrested Thursday and charged with Prosecutors say misconduct and negligence caused the deaths.

The men, Richard Cruz and Jaime Pinilla Gomez, took paying customers on boat rides on the ship despite lacking the required credentials and certifications, federal prosecutors in Manhattan said. Mr. Cruz charged about $200 an hour for the tours, prosecutors said.

When the boat capsized, prosecutors said, there were more people on board than allowed and the boat was traveling “at high speed” on a day of high winds and heavy seas.

The ship, named “Stimulus Money,” was carrying 13 people after a tour around the Statue of Liberty on July 12, 2022, when it overturned and threw all the passengers overboard, according to a criminal complaint. Lindelia Vasquez, 47, and Julian Vasquez, 7, were trapped under the boat and drowned, the complaint said. Several others, including a 51-year-old woman, were hospitalized.

Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement Thursday that federal regulations and safety protocols are in place to protect passengers.

“The defendants are alleged to have ignored these regulations, recklessly disregarded safety protocols, operated the vessel at an unsafe speed in dangerous conditions and overloaded the vessel with too many passengers on board,” he said. “And the outcome was tragic: a young boy and a woman became trapped under the ship and drowned after the ship capsized.”

Mr. Cruz and Mr. Gomez were each charged with misconduct and neglect of a ship’s officer resulting in death, which prosecutors said carries a penalty of up to 10 years in prison.

A lawyer for Mr. Cruz, Kristoff Williams, with the Federal Defenders of New York, declined to comment on the allegations Thursday evening. A lawyer for Mr. Gomez, Thomas H. Nooter, also had no comment.

A sign at the helm of Stimulus Money stated that the ship’s maximum capacity was 12 people, prosecutors said.

Under regulations, a ship carrying more than six passengers can only be operated if it has undergone a valid inspection, prosecutors said. The boat’s owner and captain, 32-year-old Cruz, had purchased the vessel about three months earlier and never requested or received proper inspections, they said.

Mr. Gomez, 25, who was piloting the boat, had “insufficient experience” and operated it in a “dangerous manner, including rapidly accelerating one of the vessel’s engines just before capsizing,” prosecutors said.

On the summer day when the boat capsized, a small craft advisory was in effect for New York Harbor at the mouth of the Hudson River, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s New York office. According to the group, there were wind gusts of 15 to 20 kilometers per hour.

According to the complaint, after the tour, the ship was traveling north on the Hudson River on its way back to Carteret, NJ, and capsized just north of Pier 79 in Midtown Manhattan.

Captain Anthony Ryan, of the New York Waterway ferry company, was preparing to depart the dock on his boat, Garden State, for its afternoon route when he was alerted to the emergency.

The scene he saw, he said days later in an interview, was one he would never forget.

“We see people waving their arms and they were in distress,” he said at the time. “They were panicking, they were scared.” He said he heard shouts in Spanish, “and just a lot of shouting.”

Ms. Vasquez had lived in Elizabeth, N.J., for about 20 years, having moved there from Medellín, Colombia, a niece, Lina Vasquez, said in an interview shortly after her aunt’s death. Police said at the time that both victims were of Colombian descent; it was unclear whether they were related.

Lindelia Vasquez worked as a manager at Kanela’s Lounge, a restaurant and catering venue in downtown Elizabeth, and had a cheerful, managerial personality, her niece said. She had three children – two young adults and a teenager – who were in the boat with her and survived.

An Alaska man died last month from Alaskapox, a rare virus that occurs mainly in small mammals and can cause skin lesions, state health officials said.

Alaskapox was first identified in 2015 in a woman living near Fairbanks, Alaska, and a total of seven cases of the virus have been reported to the Alaska Section of Epidemiology. Until last month, no one had been hospitalized or died from Alaska pox, which can also cause swollen lymph nodes and muscle or joint pain, Alaska epidemiology officials said Friday.

Of the seven people who have had Alaskapox, six lived in the Fairbanks North Star Borough, where red-backed mice and shrews have been found to have the virus, according to the Alaska Department of Health. Alaskapox has not been shown to spread between people.

Dr. Julia Rogers, an epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in an interview Tuesday that symptoms of the Alaskapox infection were generally mild.

“There may have been cases in the past that we just didn't catch because of that,” said Dr. Rogers, adding that it is possible that the recorded number of cases could increase as more doctors learn how to identify it.

The Alaska Section of Epidemiology, which has not released the name of the man who died from the virus, said in a rack that he was “an elderly man from the Kenai Peninsula with a history of drug-induced immunosuppression.”

Health officials in Alaska said it was still unclear how the man contracted the virus. The man lived alone in a wooded area and had not traveled recently or had close contact with anyone who had recently traveled, the Health Ministry said.

The man told doctors that he was caring for a stray cat at his home and that the cat often scratched him, including once near his right armpit, about a month before he noticed a red papule had formed there in September 2023. officials said. The cat was later tested for other orthopoxviruses and all tests were negative, according to the health department. Still, health officials said it was possible the stray cat could be the source of the virus.

Dr. Rogers said it was possible the stray cat's claws carried the virus because it scratched around other rodents.

“But we cannot say with certainty how the specific mode of transmission occurred in this patient or in previous patients,” said Dr. Rogers.

Dr. Joe McLaughlin, an Alaska state epidemiologist and chief of the Alaska Section of Epidemiology, said in an interview that all patients who have had Alaskapox have owned a cat or a dog, and that health officials are working to determine what role pets might play. to play. play in the spread of the virus.

“Because Alaskapox is rare, our main message is that Alaskans should not be overly concerned about this virus,” said Dr. McLaughlin, “but be aware of it.”

In the six weeks after the man noticed the lesion, he went to his GP and local emergency department several times because of the lesion, Heath said. He was prescribed several courses of antibiotics, but they did not help, health officials said.

The man was admitted to hospital on November 17 because the lesion had affected his ability to move his arm. He was later transferred to a hospital in nearby Anchorage, health officials said. While hospitalized there, the man said he experienced “burning pain” and four pox-like lesions were found across his body, health officials said.

After a number of tests, doctors were able to rule out cowpox, MPox and other viruses, health officials said. A swab from the man's lesion was later sent to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which found it was consistent with other cases of Alaskapox, according to health officials.

While the man was in the hospital, health officials said, he suffered from wounds that took a long time to heal, malnutrition, acute kidney failure and breathing problems. He died in late January, the Health Ministry said.

Dr. McLaughlin said because people with weakened immune systems have experienced worse symptoms with other orthopoxviruses, it is important for doctors in Alaska to diagnose Alaskapox early.

Poor oversight and bureaucratic delays in New York state's gold standard program for treating mentally ill people at risk of becoming violent have led to preventable injuries and even deaths in recent years, according to a state audit made public Thursday .

The audit, conducted by the state comptroller, found that the program, known as Kendra's Law, sometimes struggled to connect people to psychiatric care. In one case, it took almost a month for a mental health provider to connect with a person in the program, even though such a connection would occur within a week. The provider did not schedule a mandatory follow-up interview and shortly thereafter the individual was arrested on murder charges.

The state Office of Mental Health, the agency charged with ensuring people in the program receive treatment, only learned of the delay when the local health department notified the office of the killing, the audit found.

Overall, the audit found that Kendra's Law worked effectively in many cases in connecting people to psychiatric care. Still, it noted that the program, which forces mentally ill people into court-ordered treatment, needed to be improved to reduce delays and communication breakdowns that have sometimes led to serious consequences.

“When mistakes occur,” said the auditor, Thomas P. DiNapoli, “the consequences can be fatal.”

Treatment providers and health officials are expected to regularly share information about how people in the program are doing so they can coordinate care, for example if people haven't taken their medications, threatened to hurt themselves or have been arrested. But in almost a quarter of the cases reviewed by the auditors, there were data entry errors when reporting these serious events.

The audit did not identify program participants by name, but the cases described were dire. One person in the program was hospitalized 33 times over a year and a half for suicidal thoughts, the audit found, but none of the hospital admissions were recorded as required. The day the person was discharged from the hospital for the last time, the person died by suicide.

The audit reflects the findings of a New York Times investigation that revealed serious flaws in Kendra's law. The program, launched in 1999 after a man with untreated schizophrenia fatally pushed a woman in front of a subway train, was intended to prevent similar attacks from happening again.

But The Times found that people under this most heightened form of surveillance were accused of committing more than 380 subway shoves, assaults, stabbings and other violent acts in the past five years alone. At least five people who were or were under Kendra's law orders pushed strangers onto the subway tracks. According to The Times, more than 90 people have committed suicide during the program in the past ten years.

A man diagnosed with schizophrenia was placed under a Kendra's Law order about three years ago, but the group responsible for coordinating his care missed signals that he was becoming unstable, records and interviews show. For weeks, beginning in the spring of 2023, he expressed violent delusions as his mother begged his health care providers to get him more psychiatric help. Weeks later, he attacked a state lawmaker in Connecticut. He is still in jail awaiting trial.

In another case identified by The Times, a man named Evan Guzman was under a Kendra's Law warrant after being released from prison in April 2021, according to his mother, Lisa Guzman. But weeks after his release, when he was scheduled to receive help for his schizoaffective disorder, he rarely saw his care team, did not meet with a psychiatrist or receive prescribed medications, and became unstable, his mother said.

Ms. Guzman begged officials in Monroe County, N.Y., to provide him with more intensive help before it was too late.

“He is falling through the cracks again,” she wrote in emails to officials at the state Office of Mental Health, reviewed by The Times. “If the lack of care he receives through his current health care providers continues, he will end up back in prison or worse.”

Two months later, in July 2021, Mr. Guzman was accused of knocking on a 52-year-old man's door and stabbing him to death. He was charged with murder and is awaiting trial.

New York State spends about $29 million annually on the court-ordered treatment program, formally known as assisted outpatient treatment, or AOT, for about 3,800 people. Studies have shown the program to be largely effective at reducing incarceration rates and emergency room visits, and officials consider it the best way to get the small subset of mentally ill people considered dangerous to psychiatric treatment undergo.

But the program is underfunded and practitioners and health officials are often understaffed, The Times notes. It can take months or years for health officials to vet mentally ill people — who must either have a recent history of violence or repeated psychiatric hospitalizations — before admitting them into the program, the auditors noted.

In about half of the cases studied, it took six months to more than two years for local mental health officials to screen people for admission to the program – despite the requirement that the screenings be conducted in a “timely” manner. In the meantime, people have hurt themselves or others, the audit showed.

In one case, it took health officials about two years to evaluate a person for the program, during which time the person was hospitalized five times, including after assaulting someone.

Another person was referred to the program after threatening a family member with a knife while hallucinating, the audit found. But the local mental health agency took nearly two years to determine the person's eligibility for the program and made no progress after requesting the person's medical records to complete the process. Despite the person's psychiatric history, the person was never placed under a Kendra's Law order, the audit found.

State mental health officials said they largely agreed with the auditors' findings and were working on ways to improve monitoring. They said some of the delays in getting people involved in the program stemmed from a 2011 court decision that makes it harder to obtain the necessary medical records to force people into treatment if people don't agree to receive them. to share. Health officials said most people don't give consent, so officials have to file subpoenas for records, significantly slowing the process.

Auditors also accused local health officials of failing to take the necessary steps to renew the public's Kendra's Law orders, leading to avoidable deficiencies in care. Treatment orders typically expire after one year but can be extended, and studies have shown that longer monitoring periods increase treatment compliance and lead to better outcomes.

Auditors reviewed 37 cases and found that in more than 60 percent of them, health officials did not conduct the required review of the case before the people's court-ordered treatment would expire. In one case, a person in the program showed signs of being delusional and had become aggressive toward hospital staff, but local health officials did not attempt to renew the treatment order. In another case, health officials let a person's treatment order lapse, and soon after, the person tested positive for drugs and was kicked out of a homeless shelter.

The Times uncovered other cases in which Kendra's law enforcement orders were not renewed — with disastrous consequences.

Luis Rodriguez was placed under Kendra's Law Order in 2015 after attacking his family members while in the grip of a paranoid delusion, records show. During the program, he received monthly injections of an antipsychotic drug and showed such improvement that health officials decided his treatment should not be extended.

But without court-ordered supervision, he fell apart over the next eighteen months. He barricaded himself in his room and insisted ghosts were haunting his television before grabbing a kitchen knife, storming into the hallway of his mother's apartment building and stabbing two of her neighbors, records show.

Mr. Rodriguez pleaded guilty to attempted murder in 2022 and was sentenced to eight years in prison.

A Minnesota woman whose SUV struck a horse-drawn carriage last fall, killing two children and injuring two others, tried to trick authorities into believing her twin sister was the driver, court documents show.

The woman, Samantha Petersen, 35, was charged Monday with 21 charges, including vehicular homicide, driving under the influence of drugs and leaving the scene of an accident in Stewartville, Minnesota. It was not immediately clear whether she was in custody or had legal representation. Neither she nor her sister could immediately be reached for comment Tuesday evening.

Ms. Petersen's statements indicate she had tried to mislead investigators to avoid going to jail. a complaint filed in Fillmore County District Court.

According to the complaint, on the morning of September 25, Ms. Petersen was driving a silver SUV on a rural road about 100 miles southeast of Minneapolis when she struck the buggy, causing it to fly into a ditch. Two children, 11 and 7, died from their injuries. According to the complaint, a 13-year-old boy suffered facial injuries and a 9-year-old boy suffered a broken shoulder, internal injuries, concussion and bleeding in his brain. The buggy's horse was also killed.

According to the documents, Samantha Petersen said she called 911 after the accident and then called her sister.

Eyewitnesses who had been driving on the road told sheriff's deputies that they stopped when they noticed the debris and injured children. One witness said he noticed two women, both with blond hair, who looked the same. One wore a black jacket, black leggings and sandals; the other, later revealed to be Samantha Petersen, the driver of the silver SUV, was wearing a red Hy-Vee supermarket uniform, sheriff's office footage later showed.

The woman in the black coat, Sarah Petersen, 35, identified herself to the deputy and claimed she had been driving the silver SUV. When asked for her driver's license, she said it was in a black SUV, not the silver SUV involved in the car. the crash, which set alarm bells ringing. During an interview in the officer's car, she said that while driving home from a night shift in Rochester, Minnesota, she didn't see the buggy on the road and hit it.

The deputy then exited the car, but his recorder — which was left on near Ms. Petersen — recorded her telling her twin sister that she believed one of the deputies was watching her, according to the complaint. “There's no way they'll ever know the difference between us,” she added, “so they can't know.”

But the false story quickly unraveled. An employee at Hy-Vee, where both sisters work, told investigators that the morning of the crash they received a hysterical phone call from Samantha Petersen, saying she was high on methamphetamine and had killed two Amish children.

She also sent a text message to another person admitting to killing the children, according to the complaint. She added, “had Sarah come there and take the blame so I wouldn't go to jail.” Public records show that Samantha Petersen has several prior convictions, including driving under the influence and giving a false name to law enforcement authorities.

Another Hy-Vee employee told investigators that Sarah Petersen, who had been in jail, may have taken responsibility for the crash out of the belief that she owed her sister for caring for her children in her absence.

A review of searches on Samantha Petersen's phone later revealed that she had searched: “What happens if you have an accident with an Amish buggy and kill two people,” and “if you hit a buggy and kill two people, are you going to jail? ?”

The Fillmore County Sheriff's Office and the Fillmore County Attorney could not be reached for comment Tuesday evening.