PORT ANGELES – As the Port Angeles Police Department continues their investigation of Tuesday night’s deadly boat crash at the net pen facility in Port Angeles Harbor, KONP has learned new details from the Coast Guard, who were first on the scene.
Lt. Darin Coleman was the commanding pilot of the helicopter, hovering about 50 feet over the boat and its four occupants, minutes after the crash.
He says when they arrived, two of the passengers had climbed onto the catwalk structure of the net pen, while the other passenger was in the boat attempting CPR on Robert Elliot, now deceased.
Lt. Coleman says the boat was imbedded into the wood and styrofoam float of the pen. Coleman says that as they were lowering the rescue swimmer to assist, the behavior of the man on the boat began to change.
“So we had lowered the rescue swimmer and by then, that’s when I think he was talking to the other people on the pen that, hey, the boat was starting to shift, the behavior of the… stability of the boat started to shift. And that’s when he was calling out to them, because he started to move the unconscious survivor at that point, and then had to ask for assistance, and they were basically pulling him up onto the fish pens as the boat was sinking. So the swimmer was en route swimming at that point.”
The passengers were able to get Elliot onto the catwalk moments before the boat sank. Coleman says it was close, as the boat went under in about a minute’s time.
The boaters and the rescue swimmer were later picked up by the Coast Guard’s 45-foot vessel and transferred to a pier where first responders were waiting.
Jason Viada of the Port Angeles Police Dept. says the boat, described as open-hulled and 24-feet long, was traveling at about 25 knots, or 30 miles per hour, when it crashed. It now sits under approximately 120 feet of water. The decision of whether to raise the boat as part of the investigation has not yet been made.
An earlier police report said that at about 9:45pm Robert Elliot, 62, along with two other men and a boy, were cruising with no lights when they hit the pen. Police have said alcohol consumption may have been a contributing factor, but officer Viada had this to say:
“The information about possible contributing factors such as lighting, speed, alcohol use and unfamiliarity with the area are all preliminary investigative indicators. And so there’s still more work to be done on the investigation, still more reports to review, and I just want to stress that those are preliminary.”
The net pens are owned by Cooke Aquaculture of Canada. The state of Washington did not renew the company’s lease last year, but they were allowed to raise the atlantic salmon already in the pens until May of this year. The pens are now empty.