PHILADELPHIA – A tug pilot talking on a cell phone as he steered a huge barge into a small duck boat, killing two tourists, has agreed to plead guilty to involuntary manslaughter, federal prosecutors announced Thursday.
Tug pilot Matt Devlin, 35, of Catskill, N.Y., was consumed by a family emergency and had moved to a lower wheelhouse, where his view of the Delaware River was obscured, according to the information and plea documents filed Thursday.
In about 2 1/2 hours at the wheel, Devlin made and received 21 cell phone calls and also surfed the Internet on a laptop, investigators found. Devlin “went numb” after learning his son was having trouble waking up from minor eye surgery and had perhaps been deprived of oxygen, his lawyer said.
“You think your 5-year-old baby is going to be brain-damaged, or going to die,” lawyer Frank DeSimone said, speaking publicly for the first time about Devlin’s actions that day. “He couldn’t think and he couldn’t make decisions.”
The charges come just weeks after the National Transportation and Safety Board issued its findings on the July 7, 2010, crash.
At a public hearing, NTSB officials stressed that the nation risks a surge in deadly accidents unless it makes
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