PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Federal prosecutors are reviewing a boat crash off Rhode Island that killed a Connecticut fisherman.
Jim Martin, spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Providence, confirms that the U.S. Coast Guard asked the office to review the September crash off Westerly, which killed 80-year-old Walter Krupinski, of Stonington.
Coast Guard official Dawn Hallen told The Westerly Sun that they want to see whether the case warrants criminal charges.
Krupinski was killed in September when a 60-foot Viking yacht operated by Cooper Bacon, of Cape May, New Jersey, plowed over his 23-foot boat.
The Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management found that the 76-year-old Bacon should have changed course or slowed down to avoid Krupinski’s boat.
Bacon has pleaded not guilty to three navigation violations in the Rhode Island Traffic Tribunal.
