Victim in deadly midnight boat crash recalls ‘terror … that doesn’t go away’
MACON — Still-shaken victims and mourning relatives spoke out Thursday at a homicide sentencing, describing their lingering torment in the aftermath of a fatal boat crash on Lake Tobesofkee four years ago.
One of the victims, who’d gone cruising in a 24-foot pontoon boat on a full-moon night in the small hours of July 24, 2021, recalled how she and six others on that vessel were rammed broadside. They were plowed into by a 32-foot cigarette boat, which on impact spilled fuel as it vaulted across them before sinking in darkness.
“Today is a victory for everyone who was on that pontoon boat,” Lindsey Justice-Smith said. “We were run over, doused in gasoline and left to watch over hurt and dying friends alone and terrified. The terror ... was the kind of feeling that doesn’t go away.”
A sobbing Justice-Smith, 35, delivered her victim-impact statement to a crowded courtroom, where the speedboat’s driver, Eric Delma Head, would soon be sentenced, two days after he was convicted of homicide by vessel and five other charges.
Jurors deliberated for the better part of two hours Tuesday before convicting Head, 61, who prosecutors contended had been drinking in the hours before the wreck.
Head and a man aboard his V-hulled racing vessel were not seriously hurt. But one of the people aboard the pontoon boat that Head struck, 22-year-old William Michael “Will” Childs, was killed in the 2 a.m. collision.
The other six people aboard Childs’ boat were injured. Some 90 minutes passed before the pontoon boat was towed ashore and life-saving efforts commenced.
“We carry on because that’s what Will deserves and that’s what we deserve,” Justice-Smith said. “Eric Head’s poor judgment and reckless behavior stole a life and ruined countless more. His choices deserve consequences. ... Let today be the day that justice is truly served and we can finally get off that boat.”
The crash was a blow to west Macon’s lake community and a cautionary tale to generations of Middle Georgians who’ve traversed the waters of Bibb County’s half-century-old recreational reservoir.
The Fish N’ Pig restaurant, where some of the victims, including Childs, worked is locally renowned for its perhaps-odd-yet-beloved combination of Southern staples. Some diners arrive by boat, docking at the eatery’s back door. Oprah Winfrey, in town to tape her talk show, ate there in 2007.
In the two decades since it opened, the restaurant has become a midstate institution, a live-music gathering place as well, attracting catfish, seafood and hickory-smoked barbecue lovers from across the region.
Outside the restaurant, a bar and bandstand overlooking the lake now bears Childs’ name.
His mother, Jeannie Childs, spoke on the witness stand for half an hour Thursday. She recalled her son and how he enjoyed working at the Fish N’ Pig, where he was first employed as a busser at age 16. She also spoke of the agony of his absence.
“I go in his room every day,” she said. “I touch his picture and I tell him how much I love him and miss him. I know he’s really gone. I can no longer pretend he’s at work, hanging out with friends or on a trip. He’s gone and not coming back.”
Head, who hadn’t testified at trial, addressed the court for 30 seconds.
He said he was sorry.
He said the crash was “a tragic accident.”
He said he thinks about it daily.
“And my heart goes out to the family and friends of the victims.”
He mentioned that he had known Will Childs “a little bit” from the Fish N’ Pig.
As fate would have it, the restaurant was also where prosecutors said Head, a couple of hours before the crash, downed a vodka-and-Red Bull.
“I talked to him every time I went up there,” Head said of Childs. “I thought he was a good kid.”
Bibb County Superior Court Judge David L. Mincey III spoke next.
Mincey said Head, experienced on the water, should have known better than to go boating that night.
“Yet you chose to operate one of the most dangerous, if not the most dangerous” boat on the lake at that hour, Mincey said. “This should never have happened.”
Then the judge said, “This is not a case for leniency.”
He sentenced Head to the maximum — 20 years in prison.
About the Author
Joe Kovac Jr. is Macon bureau chief covering Middle Georgia for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
