A 9-year-old girl and a 7-year-old boy were killed in a boating accident on Barnegat Bay in New Jersey after the vessel they were aboard struck a channel marker and threw them into the water, authorities said. The crash happened Sunday night on the Intracoastal Waterway near the Bayville section of Berkeley Township, turning what had been a family day on the water into a desperate and ultimately futile search in the dark.
According to state police and the U.S. Coast Guard, the children were aboard a roughly 30-foot Tidewater vessel with their grandparents when it struck channel marker number 39 in the bay, about a half mile from shore. The impact was violent enough to eject both children from the boat and into the water, and the collision left the family scrambling in the darkness to try to reach them before it was too late.
The grandparents, identified as 63-year-old Steven Schneider and 64-year-old Lori Schneider, searched the water and pulled the two children from the bay, but found them unresponsive. They tried desperately to revive the children as they waited for help to arrive, and emergency crews rushed toward the scene to take over the effort.
Firefighters and emergency medical technicians responded out onto the water, and one firefighter was among those who performed CPR on the children in an effort to save them. Despite the frantic attempts by the family and by first responders alike, the two children were rushed to a hospital in Toms River but did not survive, and the loss left everyone at the scene shaken by what had unfolded.
A local charter boat business owner who spoke about the tragedy said that all of the lights on the channel markers had been working and were on at the time, even in the darkness of the bay. He also said he saw a life jacket next to one of the children as the child was being given CPR, one of the details that investigators will now have to sort through.
The accident has hit the community hard. Those who described the scene spoke of the water as unforgiving, and of a night that began as a family outing and ended in unimaginable grief. First responders, some of whom knew the dangers of the bay firsthand, were left to carry the weight of what they had witnessed on the dark water.
As of now, no charges have been filed in connection with the crash. Investigators said all the necessary questions were being asked, the required tests were being performed and the timeline of the night was being reviewed as they worked to determine exactly how and why the boat came to strike the marker, leaving a family and a shoreline community in mourning.