A Nighttime New York Boat Tour Turned Deadly In a Matter of Moments

Paula Rivera stood on a dock on Randall’s Island on Saturday evening, excited for her party to begin. It was her 41st birthday. Her husband, Alexander Reyes, had chartered a boat and invited 11 of their friends. They planned to board the boat, stop at a restaurant for dinner, then sail into New York Bay for some late-night sightseeing.

Before the tour began, one of the party guests, Andrés García, used FaceTime to chat with his mother, who lives in Bogotá, Colombia. Mr. Garcia sat with his wife, Sara Sanchez, 27, and their 5-month old daughter, Antonella. They smiled as they told Mr. García’s mother that they soon would board a boat to celebrate a friend’s birthday.

But the boat did not appear. Someone in the party called Zeus Luxury Rental, the boat’s operator. The p***engers were told to leave the dock and walk down the shore to a rocky area. There they found a 22-foot boat called City on the Sea, waiting just offshore.

Mr. Reyes had been told the boat could accommodate 13 people plus the captain, he said. Yet the little craft had seating capacity for no more than 10, the Police Department would later say.

The group stepped over a rocky bank and climbed aboard.

What happened next is now part of a federal investigation about how the City on the Sea ended up capsizing, resulting in the deaths of Ms. Sanchez and Antonella.

After the unusual boarding, at around 7:10 p.m., the tour proceeded as planned. The first stop was a restaurant, where the captain took his p***engers for dinner. Then they boarded again, sailed down the East River and into Upper New York Bay. As the group approached the Statue of Liberty, Mr. Reyes’s daughter, Sarah Reyes, smiled and took pictures.

It was 10:20 p.m., and a moderate breeze blew from the west at about 16 miles an hour, according to the National Data Buoy Center. The little boat, loaded with 13 p***engers and a captain, bobbed in the chop.

The captain turned the wheel, piloting the boat back toward New York City. The bow dipped below the water, sending water over the deck, said Ms. Reyes, 20, one of the p***engers.

For a moment, everyone was trapped beneath the capsized boat. A dozen people reached the surface, gasped for air, then climbed onto the hull.

Ms. Sanchez and her baby were not among them.

Ms. Rivera called 911 on her phone. The group waited 10 or 15 minutes for the first boat to arrive, she said. The surviving p***engers and captain were brought onboard. Minutes later, a helicopter rescue unit arrived at the scene with police divers. Two Coast Guard boats, two boats from the Police Department and four Fire Department boats also joined the rescue effort.

Ms. Sanchez and Antonella were rescued by police divers and taken to nearby hospitals, where they were pronounced dead.

“We are destroyed,” Cristian Martinez, the infant’s uncle, said from his home in Colombia.

Saturday’s deadly incident echoed a similar summertime boating accident in July 2022, when a 27-foot boat capsized in the Hudson River near Midtown Manhattan, leaving two people dead including a 7-year-old boy. Saturday’s tragedy shocked family members and neighbors of the dead, and focused investigators’ attention on Zeus Luxury Rental. Manuel Hernandez, 46, who was the boat’s captain, was arrested and charged with 13 counts of reckless endangerment, the police said.

Coast Guard investigators are looking into whether the tour was an illegal charter operation, according to a news release. The Coast Guard works to “ensure the safety of everyone on our waterways,” and enforces the law if boat operators are found to be navigating illegally, said Captain Doreen McCarthy, head of the Coast Guard’s New York sector.

Representatives for Zeus Luxury Rental did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Before the outing, Mr. Reyes said he asked a representative of Zeus Luxury Rental by phone how many p***engers could fit. The boat could take 12 people, he recalled the person saying. He asked if a baby could also come on board. The representative said yes, according to Mr. Reyes.

Chelsia Rose Marcius, Hurubie Meko and Davaughnia Wilson contributed reporting. Kitty Bennett contributed research.