(CN) — Missouri prosecutors on Friday charged three employees of a Branson tour company with dozens of counts of manslaughter and endangerment over the 2018 drowning of 17 people on Table Rock Lake.
Ride the Ducks Branson duck boat Captain Kenneth McKee, Operations Supervisor Charles Baltzell and General Manager Curtis Lanham are all alleged to have played a role in the tragedy. They now face 63 felony counts of manslaughter and endangerment between them.
An amphibious duck boat vehicle owned by Ride the Ducks Branson sank in Table Rock Lake on on July 19, 2018, during a thunderstorm when high winds and rough water swamped the craft. According to a statement of probable case from Missouri State Highway Patrol Master Sergeant Mark Green, there were 29 passengers, plus McKee and a land-only driver on board when it sank.
"A total of 12 children, under the age of 17 were on board. The [road] driver and 16 passengers perished," Green wrote. "Of the 17 victims that died, five of those were children."
In a statement on the charges Friday, Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt said the victims deserve justice.
"The Stone County Prosecuting Attorney and the Missouri Attorney General’s Office filed this case to hold those responsible for the tragic deaths of 17 people accountable, and we look forward to making our case in court," said Schmitt, a Republican.
Ride the Ducks Branson, which is owned by Ripley Entertainment, has been closed since 2019. A recorded message on the business' phone line said only that it would assist local and federal law enforcement in any investigations, and that "words cannot convey how profoundly our hearts are breaking."
The duck boat, which can move between land and water, entered the lake shortly before 7 p.m., despite a severe thunderstorm warning issued by the local office of the National Weather Service. According to a Reuters report on the drownings, McKee told passengers not to put on their life jackets as the craft began to take on water. That was later confirmed by Green's investigation of the incident.
"Captain McKee failed to exercise his duties and responsibilities as a licensed captain, by entering the lake during a severe thunderstorm warning. He did not follow policy or training guidelines in that he failed to have passengers don personal floatation devices as Stretch Duck 7 took on water," Green wrote in his probable cause statement.
McKee took the brunt of the legal blame. He faces 17 counts of first-degree involuntary manslaughter and 12 counts of first-degree endangering the welfare of a child.
Baltzell and Lanham were each charged with 17 counts of first-degree involuntary manslaughter for allegedly not warning drivers of the poor incoming weather or stopping tours when thunderstorm warnings were issued.
As many counts as they face, it could have been much worse for the defendants after they dodged federal charges.
Last December, U.S. District Judge Doug Harpool dismissed a 47-count federal indictment of the three men on the basis that federal courts do not have jurisdiction over Table Rock Lake. The lake is a reservoir created by the Army Corps of Engineers in the 1950s, and as such is not considered a "navigable waterway" under U.S. admiralty law, the judge found.
Despite the dismissal of the federal case, all three men could still face life in prison if found guilty of even a handful of Missouri's state charges.
The 2018 drowning incident is not the only time in recent years people have died on duck boats. In 2015, one such vehicle belonging to a Ride the Ducks franchise in Seattle crashed into a charter bus on the Aurora Bridge, killing five people. In 2010, a duck boat in Philadelphia stalled out on the Delaware River and was struck by a garbage barge. Two Hungarian tourists were killed in the crash.
A 2018 report by the Associated Press estimated that more than 40 people have been killed in duck boats since 1999.
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