MIAMI — Robert Brutto was working as a Miami-Dade Police Department marine patrol officer during the early evening of Sept. 4, 2022, when he and his colleagues received the call that there was a horrific boat accident near Elliott Key in Biscayne Bay.

Brutto, now retired from what is now the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office, left from the Marine Patrol base at Black Point Marina to become one of the initial first responders to the scene where Doral real estate broker George Pino crashed his boat, killing 17-year-old Luciana “Lucy” Fernandez and permanently injuring her classmate, now 21-year-old Katerina “Katy” Puig.

Brutto and his colleagues arrived at Cutter Bank, where Pino smashed into a steel channel marker minutes earlier, to help steady a civilian boat, on which Lucy was lying, from the propeller wash gusting from an overhead Miami-Dade Fire Rescue helicopter, which was lowering a paramedic on board, Brutto testified Tuesday afternoon during Pino’s vessel homicide and manslaughter trial in Miami.

To steady the other boat, Brutto had to press his police vessel up against it to stop it from spinning in the powerful, prop-driven winds.

Moments earlier, Pino had pulled Lucy from underneath his capsized boat. Boaters, some of whom were the ones who urged Pino to look beneath the vessel for Lucy, got her to a civilian boat and began CPR. After the paramedic was lowered, she was transferred to a police boat and taken to shore to be taken to Kendall Regional Hospital, where she died the next morning.

Brutto then pulled up to a large boat on which Katy and another girl, Isabella Rodriguez, were lying in the fetal position after being severely injured. People on that boat also picked up some of the other girls involved in the crash. Pino was on another civilian’s boat, floating next to that vessel, and then got on Brutto’s boat, the footage shows.

Brutto told jurors that Katy was in bad shape. She was unresponsive, her breathing was labored and she had a weak pulse. He radioed for Katy and Isabella to be medically transferred from the boat. He said Katy had fiberglass fragments from Pino’s boat in her hair. She was never conscious when he was on scene, and Isabella only communicated in nods.

Defense attorney Howard Srebnick and his team did not want the jury to see Brutto’s body camera footage, which showed the chaotic scene on the swim deck of the large boat as the sun was setting in the distance, with audio of the girls’ friends screaming for someone to help Katy and Isabella.

Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Marissa Tinkler Mendez, who’s presiding over the trial, allowed the jury to see the video Wednesday, but prosecutors agreed to remove audio that referred to the severity of Puig’s injuries. The video was also edited and did not show the extent of the girl’s injuries. Pino is charged with Lucy’s death, not injuring Katy.

As part of a series of pre-trial motions, Pino’s attorneys asked Tinkler Mendez to stop the jury from hearing about Puig’s injuries. She continues to relearn motor skills and will likely deal with a lifetime of physical and neurological challenges. Rodriguez was also seriously hurt, but has recovered.

The body camera footage shows a shirtless Pino on another boat, and Brutto asking him if he was injured. Pino is heard saying he was “alright,” but a woman with him says he had a head injury. Brutto, who testified that Pino had a head gash, then asked him to remain seated because of his injury, the footage shows.

Pino was eventually transferred to another police boat and taken to Elliott Key, where firefighters and police set up a triage and staging area. It was there Pino told Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission Investigator William Thompson that another boat coming at his caused the wreck and that he had “two beers” when asked by Thompson if he would voluntarily submit to a blood draw to test for alcohol.

Tinkler Mendez rejected defense attorneys’ attempts to have those two statements barred from jurors’ ears. The claim of the other boat was once central to Pino’s explanation as to what caused the crash. It’s a statement he not only told police, but also repeated in a sworn statement several months later in a civil case connected to the crash.

But no other witness corroborated the claim nor did photographic evidence.

Pino, 55, was on his 29-foot Robalo center-console boat that day heading back to the gated Ocean Reef Club community in north Key Largo from an afternoon outing at an Elliott Key sandbar celebrating his daughter Cecilia’s 18th birthday. He was with his wife, also named Cecilia, and 11 of the daughter’s friends, including Lucy, Katy and Isabella.

Pino is not charged with boating under the influence, and investigators say alcohol was not a factor in the crash. While some witnesses testified during the trial that they saw Pino drinking that day, and several of the girls with him drank alcohol to excess, no witness said they saw Pino drunk, and several testified he did not show signs of impairment.

Cops also found 61 empty and partially-empty containers of various types of alcohol when they salvaged the Robalo the day after the crash. Pino’s attorneys say those containers were not just from Pino and his passengers, but also from other people partying at Elliott Key. The attorneys said Pino’s boat was used to take the bottles and cans to shore to be thrown away.

The Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office charged Pino with vessel homicide in October 2024 and manslaughter later that year. He faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted. He had been charged with far-less severe counts of misdemeanor careless boating after the original Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission investigation ended in August 2023.

Had he pleaded guilty, he was only looking at 60 days in a county jail and a fine. But, following a series of Miami Herald stories reporting flaws in the investigation, prosecutors reexamined the case and charged him with two felonies.,

Katy Puig’s family has attended every day of the trial, but has not spoken. The courtroom has been packed, with one side filled with Pino’s supporters, and the others in support of the Fernandez and Puig families.

Lucy’s father, Andres Fernandez, testified Tuesday about how he and his wife, Melissa, drove their boat to the sandbar to briefly visit their daughter, who asked them to stop by. He emotionally told jurors that he gave her what became their last embrace when he and Melissa headed back to Ocean Reef so he could catch Florida State’s opening football game that evening.

“She gave me a hug, and I remember it clearly because it was the last time I held her alive,” Fernandez told jurors and prosecutor Laura Adams on Tuesday.

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