New York Boat Tragedy: Four Lives Lost, Search Ongoing for Missing Passenger in Freezing Waters

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Four people have died and another has been left injured after a boat capsized in New York City‘s freezing waterways on Sunday.

Emergency responders are still searching for a sixth person following the tragedy, which unfolded at around noon in the Ambrose Channel between Queens and Staten Island, the city’s main shipping shipping route. Specialist police divers and the US Coast Guard rushed to the scene of the incident following reports of a ‘vessel in distress’, where they found five victims and the boat overturned, according to ABC 7 .

Two people were airlifted to Staten Island University Hospital, while the other three were brought to the Coast Guard Station in Sandy Hook. Tragically, four people have now been declared dead, while the fifth person is said to be in a stable condition. Teams are continuing to look for another missing individual in the channel.

It’s thought that the water temperature was around the mid-30s when the boat rolled over. Roy Scott, a marine surveyor and former U.S. Coast Guard inspector, said the victims would have had just minutes before they perished in these conditions.

He told CBS: “If these people went into the water, and in this temperatures, I can’t picture them really lasting more than maybe 10 minutes max when they would just completely go into hypothermia.” According to ABC 7, the boat that sunk was a Grady White-branded vessel, which can be as small as 18 feet long. The NYPD and Coast Guard are currently investigating the tragedy, and no names of the victims have so far been released.

One onlooker who claimed to have spotted the wreckage of the vessel wrote on Facebook: “As our Cruise Ship passed by the recovery teams I looked out over the water and prayed not only for the victims but all the first responders working in the cold waters.” Another added: “Absolutely just tragic for all.” Pictures shared on social media also appeared to show the vessel being towed away by a salvage crew later in the day.

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The tragic incident comes after Coast Guard teams rescued four Americans stranded on a raft in the Atlantic Ocean. David Potts, John Potts, Andrew Cullar and Russel Case were sailing the Mariposa from St. Croix to Texas and planned to stop in Key West when they were forced to abandon ship after their boat struck a boat and sank.

Coast Guard at the San Juan Command Center received a distress call from an emergency positioning radio beacon before directing an aircraft to launch from Puerto Rico to search for signs of distress. The Coast Guard also sent out a call asking vessels in the area to be on the lookout for possible distress.

The El Coquí, a 720-foot container ship traveling from San Juan, Puerto Rico to Jacksonville, Florida, diverted to search the area before the Coast Guard air team located the life raft. The air crew then carried out a series of low passes over a nearby fishing boat called the Bonanza in order to alert them and get the crew to follow the helicopter to the life raft.

All four Americans in the life raft were then able to use a ladder to board the Bonanza before being transported the survivors to the El Coquí container ship who continued on its journey to Jacksonville.

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