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Captain of boat that capsized in New York facing federal charges after mom, infant die

▶ Watch Video: Mother, 5-month-old baby killed in New York boat capsize, captain arrested

A woman and her 5-month-old baby died after a vessel carrying 14 people overturned in New York Harbor on Saturday night, according to police, and the boat’s captain now faces federal charges.

Manuel Hernandez, 46, was arrested on 13 counts of reckless endangerment, police said Sunday, and authorities are investigating whether the vessel was operating illegally as a charter, the U.S. Coast Guard said.

Hernandez also appeared in federal court in Manhattan on Monday and was charged with two counts of misconduct and neglect of ship officer resulting in death, according to a federal complaint. He was not required to enter a plea and was released on $50,000 bail, The Associated Press reported. Hernandez has been transferred to federal custody, law enforcement sources told CBS News.

Hernandez and his lawyer, Amy Gallicchio, declined to comment outside court on Monday, The AP reported.

Manuel Hernandez
Manuel Hernandez leaves U.S. District Court in Manhattan with his lawyer, Amy Gallicchio, on Aug. 10, 2026, after being charged in the deaths of two people in a boating accident in New York Harbor.

AP Photo/Larry Neumeister

According to the federal charging documents, Hernandez was operating the vessel with 14 people onboard, which exceeded the maximum allowable capacity of 10. Hernandez “knowingly operated the Vessel with an infant onboard, knowing that the infant was not wearing a personal floatation device,” the documents state. 

Hernandez was allegedly operating the vessel without a valid Coast Guard Certificate of Inspection, “which is required for a vessel to operate with paying customers onboard, and, in fact, the Vessel was of a type and size that made it ineligible to receive a COI for the type of operation conducted by Hernandez,” according to the charging documents. 

An illegal charter is any passenger-for-hire vessel operation that lacks Coast Guard credentials, safety equipment and inspection certificates, the Coast Guard said.

The New York Police Department said it was called to an overturned vessel near Liberty Island, home to the Statue of Liberty, at 10:55 p.m. on Saturday. The department deployed a harbor unit, a scuba team and an aviation team to the scene, where 12 people had already been rescued from the water.

A 27-year-old woman and a 5-month-old baby girl were located and taken to NYU Langone Hospital, where they were declared deceased on arrival, according to authorities. Law enforcement sources identified to CBS News the 27-year-old woman as Sara Sanchez and her baby as Antonella Garcia. 

Il Punto Ristorante, an Italian restaurant in Midtown Manhattan, said on social media that Sanchez and Garcia were the wife and daughter of one of their employees, Andres Garcia, who was also on the boat.

“What was meant to be a joyful family outing ended in unimaginable tragedy,” the restaurant wrote on Instagram. 

A coworker told CBS New York that Andres Garcia and Sanchez also have a 6-year-old son, but it was not clear if he was also on the boat. Police said the family lived in College Point, Queens, and neighbors told CBS New York they had just moved there about two months ago.

A Sea the City boat initially saw the capsized boat and people in the water and helped 11 people out of the water, according to the company’s founder, Adam Schwartz. 

The remaining survivors were taken to a local hospital and, according to police, had minor injuries.

“We are deeply saddened by the tragic loss of life last night, and our thoughts are with the victims’ family and loved ones during this incredibly difficult time,” Captain Doreen McCarthy, the Coast Guard Sector New York commander, said in a statement. “We are extremely grateful for the heroic, swift actions of our partner agencies and Good Samaritan vessel who assisted in rescuing survivors from the water.”

Police said they are investigating the cause of the deadly incident.

How the Boston Red Sox finally broke the ‘Curse of the Bambino’ to end an 86-year championship drought

By CNN
(CNN) — Editor’s note: Watch CNN Original Series “Decades in Sports” on the CNN app. Across six episodes, the series explores the defining moments, athletes and cultural shifts that shaped sports over the past six decades, from the television revolution and Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, right up to the impact of social media on today’s biggest stars.For generations, the Boston Red Sox had become accustomed to heartbreak.After winning the World Series in 1918, the famed franchise endured one of the most unprecedented droughts in American sports history.Game 7 losses in 1946, 1967, 1975 and 1986 made it feel as though the Sox might never get over the hump again and lift an elusive sixth Commissioner’s Trophy.By 2004, that barren spell had stretched to a staggering 86 years, reinforcing the idea that Boston was somehow cursed - a notion that had become part of baseball folklore.And when the Sox fell behind 3-0 to the New York Yankees in the American League Championship Series (ALCS), it looked as though history was about to repeat itself.But for a franchise that had spent decades in distress, enough was finally enough.Curse of the BambinoThe roots of Boston’s misery stretched all the way back to 1919, when the Red Sox sold Babe Ruth – then a star pitcher and slugger who would become arguably the greatest player in baseball history – to the Yankees.The Yankees then went on to become baseball’s most dominant franchise - winning 27 World Series titles - while the Red Sox would not taste success for the rest of the 20th century.This gave birth to the “Curse of the Bambino,” the notion that Boston’s decision to part ways with Ruth “is the reason why the Red Sox go not only so long without winning a World Series, but losing them in such catastrophic, fateful, cursive ways,” says Devin Gordon, a contributing writer at The New York Times Magazine.After Bill Buckner’s infamous error in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series – with the Sox leading the New York Mets 3-2 in the series and 5-3 in the 10th inning with two outs – it felt as though this cursed team from New England was just destined to always fall short.As CNN Contributor Bob Costas says in the series, “The story of the Red Sox is heartache… so close, yet so far,” and even 2003, Boston’s gut-wrenching loss to the Yankees in Game 7 of the ALCS showed the “Curse of the Bambino” had followed the Sox into the new millennium.So when the two franchises met in the ALCS a year later, it seemed almost inevitable that the Red Sox would come up short again, because as Joe Posnanski – author of Why We Love Baseball – highlights, “hopelessness was probably at a high.”And for good reason, as New York won the first three games to take a commanding 3-0 lead, and as NBC Sports broadcaster Kenny Albert recalls, “in Game 3 it’s not even close, the Yankees score 19 runs (and) they had just demolished the Red Sox.”“I’m a columnist for the Boston Globe, and I destroy these guys in print,” says former Globe columnist Jackie MacMullan. “Their nickname was ‘the idiots,’ and I was like, ‘yeah, they’re idiots alright.’”Game 4 looked certain to be the one where the Sox’ dreams would be crushed by the Yankees once again, as they entered the ninth inning 4-3 down and just three outs away from elimination.One play changed everythingBut then Boston sent Dave Roberts to first base as a pinch runner, and waiting for him on the mound was Mariano Rivera, arguably the greatest closer in baseball history.Everyone in Yankee Stadium – including Rivera himself - knew Roberts was going to steal, and as Gordon highlights, “it’s very, very hard to steal a base of a pitcher whose one pitch is a 95 mph fastball… which is exactly what happened.”Roberts somehow slid safely into second, and in retrospect, it represented the first crack in the Yankees’ seemingly impenetrable grip on the series.As Posnanski highlights, “It’s not like Dave Roberts’ steal changed anything that was obvious, but looking back on it, you realised it changed everything.”Bill Mueller then drove Roberts home with a game-tying single, before David Ortiz delivered the decisive blow with a walk-off home run in the 12th inning.The Red Sox then won Game 5 in extra innings, went into Yankee Stadium and won Game 6, then returned home for Game 7 and completed the greatest comeback in MLB postseason history, and “it’s pandemonium in Boston like you’ve never seen,” says Gordon.The Red Sox had come back from the depths of despair, then swept aside the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series to end their 86-year championship drought.And as Posnanski highlights in the series, “it was so perfect because Red Sox fans had built all of this scar tissue around their hearts, and the greatest gift of all that Red Sox team gave them is that once they got to the World Series, they just won, and there was never any pressure that they wouldn’t.”After all those years, the curse had finally been broken, and a franchise once defined by failure suddenly became one of baseball’s great modern success stories.Boston lifted the Commissioner’s Trophy again in 2007, 2013 and 2018, with the Sox’s four World Series titles being the most of any MLB franchise this century.It was one of the greatest turnarounds in American sports history, and it all started with one game - and stolen base - in 2004.The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
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