Drunk Boat Crash Victims’ Families File Lawsuits Against Boat Driver, Owner, Passengers

The families of two victims of a fatal drunk boat crash in August have filed lawsuits against the driver of the boat, the owner, and people believed to have been passengers that day.

Ten-year-old Brooklyn Carroll was killed when the boat, driven by Quinten Kight, careened into a group of swimmers on Harris Lake in North Carolina, as CrimeOnline reported. Kight and Annemarie Flannigan, the boat’s owner, have been charged with second degree murder and other counts related to the crash.

Court documents say investigators found 39 empty hard seltzer cans on Flanigan’s boat and that Kight “had a strong odor of alcohol on his breath, had red, glassy eyes, and his speech was hard to understand.”

Jennifer Stehle, a friend of Carroll’s mother, was severely injured in the crash, which was so strong the impact broke the propellor on the boat Kight was driving, according to the new lawsuits, which also say that Kight ordered those on board to toss everything overboard — which included about 50 more empty beer cans found in the water, WRAL reported.

The separate lawsuits filed by Carroll’s family and Stehl — whose leg was amputated — and her husband each name eight defendants, including Kight and Anne Marrie Flannigan, the boat’s owner.

A police report said they found a cooler with 80 to 100 more cans of hard seltzer and accused the defendants of “shotgunning” — puncturing a can and sucking the “geyser” it forms.

The lawsuits contend that the other passengers on Flannigan’s boat were well aware that Kight was highly intoxicated and did nothing stop him from driving, although several of the passengers had not been drinking.

According to the lawsuits, Kight, who had been drinking for hours by the time of the crash, was pulling wakeboarders when one of them fell off. He kept driving at a “high rate of speed” while he looked back at the wakeboards — and “headed straight” for Carroll and Stehl, driving “directly over” them, Law&Crime reported.

He kept going for another 150 yards after hitting the swimmers.

Police found Kight eating a sandwich when they arrived. His blood alcohol content was 0.17, more than double the legal limit in North Carolina, five hours after the fatal incident.

Kight and Flanigan remain in the Chatham County Jail on $1 million bonds each.