A drunken boater struck three people who were swimming in a North Carolina lake over the weekend, killing a 10-year-old girl and critically injuring a woman, the authorities said.
The boater, Quinten Kight, 40, of Vass, N.C., was charged with operating a boat in a reckless manner while intoxicated and causing a death or serious injury by impaired boating during the collision, which happened on the Shearon Harris Reservoir about 25 miles southwest of Raleigh, N.C., according to charging documents.
At a hearing on Monday in District Court in Chatham County, N.C., a prosecutor said that officers had found 39 empty beer cans in the boat that Mr. Kight had been driving and that he had tried to get rid of them. Seven of the empty beer cans appeared to have been “shotgunned,” a binge drinking ritual, Jeff Nieman, the district attorney for Chatham and Orange Counties in North Carolina, said at the hearing.
In 2010, Mr. Kight pleaded guilty in New Mexico to having operated a motor vehicle under the influence one year earlier, court records show.
And in December 2023 in another county in North Carolina, Mr. Kight was arrested on felony charges of hit-and-run that resulted in an injury. Those charges are pending.
“This man’s not safe to be out in the community right now,” Mr. Nieman said at the hearing.
It was not clear whether Mr. Kight, who indicated in court filings that he was indigent and had retired from the U.S. Army, had a lawyer. The public defender’s office in Chatham County did not immediately respond on Monday to a request for comment.
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The post Drunken Boater Hits Swimmers in N. Carolina Lake, Killing Girl, 10, Police Say appeared first on New York Times.
