‘All of us ended up in the water’: Victims’ relatives, survivors give emotional accounts of Sapelo Island’s gangway collapse

By CNN Newsource

Published October 22, 2024 12:36 PM

By Rebekah Riess, CNN

(CNN) — Emotional accounts from relatives of the victims and survivors of the partial collapse of a boat dock gangway on Georgia’s Sapelo Island and a newly released video of the frantic rescue efforts paint a dramatic picture of Saturday’s incident.

Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, joined by some of the victims’ family members, as well as survivors who fell into the water when the aluminum gangway they were standing on collapsed, said Tuesday their deaths were “unnecessarily, unjustifiably and … certainly preventable.” Crump is representing the families of three of the seven victims who died.

The victims were among the dozens of people who traveled to Sapelo Island last weekend to celebrate the Gullah-Geechee, a community of descendants of Africans who were enslaved on coastal plantations in the South.

As some were ready to board a ferry returning to the mainland, a gangway collapsed on the visitor ferry dock and at least 20 people were plunged into the Duplin River, Georgia Department of Natural Resources officials said.

“We want an investigation on every level, to get the answers to how this happened,” Crump said. “They were there for a celebration, and it turned into a tragedy because of malfeasance and inadequate infrastructure.”

Crump alleges negligence led to the incident and is calling for a federal investigation. Natalie Jackson, an attorney with Crump’s team, said at Tuesday’s news conference they’re looking into the entities responsible for day-to-day operations and repairs as well as the manufacturing of materials and the gangway design.

“We will get justice for the ‘Sapelo Seven,’” Crump said.

Yvette Jackson, one of the seniors on a family trip visiting Sapelo Island, barely made it across the gangway before the collapse and said at Tuesday’s news conference, “It was the most horrific thing I have ever experienced.”

“We heard all the screaming and going on, and so I turned around, and when I turned around, I couldn’t believe what I saw,” Katrena Alexander, Jackson’s aunt, who also made it across the gangway, said through tears. “I just stood there, looking down in that water and saw all those people.”

“And then it hit me, Regina, Regina, where’s Regina? Oh, my God, where’s my Regina,” Alexander said. Her daughter, Regina Brinson, was one of those who had fallen into the water but survived.

Video footage of the aftermath shows people desperately clinging to a section of the walkway, which was hanging at a steep angle in the water.

Brinson described attempting to help 93-year-old Carlotta McIntosh and her walker across the gangway, recruiting her uncle, Isaiah Thomas to help, before all three of them were plunged into the water.

“I heard a crack, then I looked and all I remember is releasing the walker and Miss Carlotta just fell straight down in the water,” Brinson recalled. “All of us ended up in the water, and the currents just pushed probably about a good 10 of us away from the ferry. It just pushed us and pushed us. It pushed us.”

Multiple people are seen on video bobbing in the water as life jackets are thrown at them from shore, and then seen further adrift from the incident site.

Brinson said she spotted her uncle in the water and called out for him to grab her hand. “He grabbed my hand, but he grabbed my shirt too, and he kept pulling me and pulling me and pulling me under the water. And I kept saying to myself, ‘Oh my God, I’m going to die,’” she said.

“I had to take his fingers, one by one, and peeled them off of my shirt, and I floated back up to the top, and I saw his face, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, what did I do? What did I do?’ And he floated by me,” Brinson said. Thomas did not survive.

Catherine Sneed had an emotional reunion Monday with Bertha McKnight, the woman she helped rescue. They held each other’s hands and Sneed gave her a kiss on the forehead.

“I checked on her Monday and she is much better than she was in the day of the incident, thank God,” her niece, Vanessa Jordan, said.

Sneed said that she grabbed Bertha McKnight’s hand while she was in the water and held on to her until they were able to get a lifejacket on her.

“As you can see, we’re in desperate need of mental health counseling for the PTSD,” Crump said Tuesday.

“Nobody knows what it’s like to go under the water and let somebody help you out and bring you out. It’s a dream that you wish that you hadn’t had,” Pearl Davis, who also fell into the water, said. “To go back on the bus with the people and miss the people that you went with – it’s really, really, really hard.”

CNN’s Nick Valencia, Sarah Dewberry and David Williams contributed to this report.