This story is about a tragic combination of booze, speed and boating at night.
Tom Gibson (above), 37, an experienced boater from Lake Village, Indiana, was just indicted there on several charges as a result of a crash he had on his Fountain 42 last summer that killed the other two people on board. The Indiana Department of Natural Resources charged Gibson on two counts each of reckless homicide, criminal recklessness and operating a motorboat while intoxicated resulting in death. After he was booked, Gibson posted $60,000 bail. The trial date hasn’t been set yet.
Prosecutors say Gibson left East Chicago Marina about 9 pm on Saturday, July 23, with Timothy Dunlap, 62, a VP of a Teamsters local and a town trustee from Lynwood, Illinois, and Richard Wade, 68, a retired firefighter from Hammond, Indiana. They had been seen drinking at the Calumet Harbor Yacht Club earlier.
Gibson was next seen at 5 am the next day, walking barefoot on a road at the Arcelor Mittal Steel Mill in East Chicago. He said his boat had hit something and he had been ejected but that his two friends were still in the water. He said he had been driving about 69 miles an hour at the time.
The Coast Guard said Gibson’s boat was found at a breakwater near the steel mill, about a mile north of the marina. Rescuers found both Dunlap and Wade in the water; both had suffered from blunt force trauma; both had drowned. Other boaters said the water was flat, “like glass,” that night, and that a red flasher near the breakwater was not working. For more:
