Seadoo craft crashes into idle boat

June 16, 2003

Lee Hammel
TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

WORCESTER- A personal watercraft ridden by a 14-year-old girl smashed into a boat sitting in the middle of Lake Quinsigamond about 6:30 p.m. yesterday, police said.

The accident, about a mile north of the Route 9 bridge, sent the girl and an occupant of the boat to the hospital with injuries. The force of the crash separated the gunwale from the hull of the boat and left the Seadoo personal watercraft embedded halfway into the 17-foot Sunbird inboard-outboard boat, Patrolman Douglas L. Farber said.

Monique Silva, 14, of 15 Jaques Ave., and Jeffrey Gentile, 29, of 12 Lyons St., an occupant of the boat struck by the personal watercraft, both were admitted to UMass Memorial Medical Center - University Campus, where they were listed in stable condition last night, a nursing supervisor said. Sgt. Timothy P. Walsh said Mr. Gentile suffered broken ribs and that Monique had a serious laceration of the head.

Alan Spring, 22, of 4 Sutton Place, who owns the Sunbird, said his boat was sitting motionless alongside a Laser boat, and he was talking to a friend, Andy Belsito, in the Laser on the port side. Mr. Spring said he turned around just in time to see a girl, who looked scared, plow the Seadoo she was riding into the starboard side of the boat.

"She was cooking - she was going pretty good," Mr. Spring said.

Mr. Gentile was hurt "pretty bad," Mr. Spring said, but it would have been worse if he had not moved from the rear-facing seat at the back of the Sunbird just before the crash, which left parts of the green Seadoo amid broken glass and exposed cables in the splintered fiberglass 13-year-old craft that Mr. Spring bought from his father this year.

After the accident, Monique was floating in the water in her life preserver, Mr. Spring said. "Her face was all bloody. She was yelling and stuff.

"She was trying to get into his (Mr. Belsito's) boat," but the boaters were afraid of injuring her further by hauling her into the boat, Mr. Spring said.

Monique and Adriana Olemvara, her mother, each had a personal watercraft and were traveling north up the lake when the accident occurred, according to Monique's uncle, Reynaldo Silva of 57 Shirley Road, Shrewsbury. Her mother continued about 200 feet to the boat ramp on the Shrewsbury side of the lake, where her father, Ronilson Silva, and her uncle got on the craft and went to the accident scene, her uncle said.

"They thought she looked pretty bad" with a cut on her forehead, and they got her on the Seadoo and took her back to the Shrewsbury boat dock, said Muller Silva, 17, her brother. After lessons with her father, Monique was riding the personal watercraft by herself for the third time yesterday, said Muller Silva, who translated for family members who left Brazil two-and-a-half years ago.

Sgt. Walsh said the speed limit on the lake is posted at 40 mph. Police said that judging from the impact of the crash, they believe the personal watercraft was going faster than that.

Paul A. Norton, a Massachusetts Environmental Police officer said, "Speed was a factor. But more than speed, inexperience was the cause."

He said that a person under age 16 cannot legally operate a personal watercraft. A boating safety certification is required to operate such craft from age 16 to 18, he said.

The Shrewsbury police boat patrol; Worcester police operations, traffic and Bureau of Criminal Identification; the Fire Department Rescue Squad and scuba team; Massachusetts Environmental Police; and ambulance personnel all responded to the scene.