‘Please don’t go and die.’ Jury rules in cigarette boat, pontoon boat crash.
MACON — A man at the helm of a 32-foot speedboat when it plowed into a pontoon boat in the middle of the night four years ago, killing a young man aboard the pontoon boat and injuring six others on it, was found guilty Tuesday of homicide by vessel.
Eric Delma Head, 61, was also convicted of serious injury by vessel, operating a vessel under the influence less safe and other charges. He faces upward of 20 years in prison if sentenced to maximum penalties at a hearing in Bibb County Superior Court on Thursday.
The wreck happened in the wee hours of July 24, 2021, on Lake Tobesofkee — a 1,750-acre reservoir on this Middle Georgia city’s west side.
Witnesses testified that Head’s V-hulled cigarette boat, which he claimed could top 70 mph, struck the pontoon boat with such force that it “ramped over” the pontoon, shearing the motors off Head’s vessel, which soon sank. He and another man on his boat were not seriously hurt.
The episode and its aftermath generated widespread local news coverage as some aboard the pontoon boat, including the 22-year-old man who was killed, William Michael Childs, worked at a popular lakeside restaurant called the Fish N’ Pig.
The seven had ventured out on the water after the waterfront eatery closed to gaze at the full moon and unwind. They were idling or adrift, moving slowly, when the crash occurred.
After hearing testimony for over parts of five days, jurors deliberated for the better part of two hours before rendering guilty verdicts.
Head was, for reasons not entirely clear, not administered sobriety tests the night of the wreck. By the time his blood was drawn some nine hours later, he tested negative for intoxicants.
His lawyers contended the pontoon boat might have crossed into Head’s path and that Childs, who was at the helm of the pontoon boat, may himself have been under the influence of marijuana.
Prosecutors, however, said that didn’t matter. They presented black-and-white video from a faraway lakefront home that, while grainy, offered jurors sound and obscured images of the run-up to the crash and its aftermath. The video showed the light on Head’s far-speedier boat approaching the pontoon vessel, though any view of the impact itself was blocked by a porch column on the house where the camera was mounted.
Prosecutors buttressed their case, arguing that Head had been impaired — presenting video and receipts of him buying alcohol in the hours leading up to the crash. They also used his own voice.
Assistant Bibb district attorneys showed jurors security-cam footage from a lake-area gas mart where some eight hours before the crash Head and a friend went to buy beer and Red Bull energy drinks. The friend could be heard on that video saying of Head, “He’s buying my beer, that’s how drunk he is.”
The prosecutors also presented evidence of Head drinking vodka and Red Bull about two and a half hours before the wreck at a bar inside the Fish N’ Pig.
They also played recordings of Head’s voice from the moments after the crash.
Head, in search of help as his boat was sinking not far across the water from the crippled pontoon vessel, called people he knew who lived on the lake and had boats. But at that hour, his calls went straight to voicemail.
Head, likely unaware of that, can be heard in voicemail recordings either talking to himself or to the other man on his boat about his predicament and the fates of those on the vessel he’d just struck.
“Please don’t go and die over there,” Head said.
Then he said, “I’m going to jail over this. … I’ll probably lose my house. I’ll lose everything I’ve got. But I’m drunk. … I’m f---ing drunk.”
About the Author
Joe Kovac Jr. is Macon bureau chief covering Middle Georgia for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
