Relatives of couple killed in boat crash angry with judge for delaying boater’s imprisonment

A Hialeah man sentenced to prison for causing the deaths of a Miami-area couple in a boat crash in the Bahamas was supposed to surrender to authorities on Friday. But at the 11th hour, a federal judge gave him until March to turn himself in —to the dismay of the victims’ relatives.

Josbel Fernandez Echevarria was given a reprieve Thursday by U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams after she first ordered him to surrender immediately at his emotionally charged sentencing hearing last Friday. She then opted to give him a week to put his personal affairs in order.

It is unclear why Williams changed her mind again about delaying Fernandez’s surrender. But she initiated a Zoom meeting with the prosecutors and his defense attorney on Thursday and scheduled March 11 as the date for Fernandez to start his prison term of three years and eight months. She also imposed new financial conditions on his bond and required him to wear a GPS ankle bracelet and report to the federal probation office every week.

Victim’s father writes letter to judge

Relatives of the two passengers who died in the boat crash — Javier Perez, 29, and Carolyn Alvarez, 26 — were angry over the judge’s decision.

“We’re very upset and don’t understand why she’s doing this after she had already decided to make him surrender on Friday,” said Luis Perez, one of Javier’s three brothers.. “We feel like it’s a slap in the face.”

Javier’s father, Juan Perez, wrote a letter to the judge on Friday, bringing to her attention “the distressing impact” of her decisions on the victims and their families.

“The decision to grant Mr. Fernandez an additional week and subsequently three more months to surrender to the authorities after pleading guilty [and being sentenced] is disheartening,” Juan Perez wrote the judge, providing a copy of the letter to the Miami Herald.

“This leniency raises serious questions about the pursuit of justice for the victims and their families who have already suffered immensely due to the tragic incident involving Mr. Fernandez.”

Prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, which wanted Fernandez to surrender to prison immediately after his sentencing hearing, declined to comment about the judge’s latest decision.

Fernandez’s attorney, Orlando do Campo, said the judge had “concerns” about the initial surrender date and asked both sides to discuss the matter on Thursday. He pointed out that his client is a non-violent, first-time offender, so it’s not unusual to delay his surrender date a couple of months. He also noted that the judge still sentenced Fernandez at the high end of the advisory guidelines, which ranged from 37 to 46 months.

“It’s not like he’s getting a break,” do Campo told the Herald. “He still has to serve the 44 months.”

After sentencing Fernandez last Friday, Judge Williams immediately declared: “The time has come to surrender,” indicating that the defendant would be brought into custody by the U.S. Marshals Service and held at the Federal Detention Center until his placement in the Bureau of Prisons.

His attorney, do Campo, urged the judge to hold off on making the 37-year-old Fernandez surrender right away, saying that he’s married with two young children and runs a welding business with 20 employees.

Williams relented a bit, saying: “I will give you a week.”

Unusual move by judge

But then she changed her mind again on the defendant’s surrender date — an unusual move by a federal judge after the sentencing. There’s no indication in the judge’s order as to why she delayed it.

At Fernandez’s sentencing hearing, relatives and friends of the two deceased victims showed open contempt for the defendant.

Toward the end, Fernandez rose and addressed the families, staring directly at them.

“I look at your families with great guilt,” Fernandez said, admitting that his reckless driving of the power boat caused the couple’s deaths over the Fourth of July holiday weekend off the coast of Bimini in the Bahamas more than three years ago.

“There is nothing I could ever say to you that would make it right,” he said. “What I did was horrific.” But then he said something that enraged the victims’ supporters: “There was no intoxication. ... It was a horrific mistake that I made. I should not have been going at that speed.”

In sentencing Fernandez, Williams took into consideration there had been alcoholic drinking on his boat. But the judge acknowledged there was no official finding he was impaired when he crashed on the night of July 2, 2020. She also expressed her sorrow to the victims’ relatives, who believed Fernandez was drunk and made no effort to help the young couple.

“There may always be a question about what happened on that day and why it happened,” Williams told the packed courtroom.

The relatives and friends of Fernandez openly expressed their displeasure with his sentencing, and court security officers admonished them, saying “no outbursts.”

Williams said she was so concerned about the tension in the courtroom that she asked the relatives and friends of the boat-crash victims to leave first, and then, after 10 minutes, she let the supporters of Fernandez exit.

In September, Fernandez pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter charges in the deaths of two passengers. He admitted that he killed, “without malice,” the two passengers “by failing to maintain a proper lookout and failing to proceed at a safe speed,” according to his guilty plea to the two-count indictment.

Fernandez was operating the pleasure boat, a 32-foot Everglades, at 43.4 miles per hour when it crashed into the well-charted rock formation known as North Turtle Rock that July night, according to a statement filed when Fernandez pleaded guilty in September.

Fernandez and his girlfriend had met Javier Perez and Carolyn Alvarez while they were vacationing in Bimini that Fourth of July weekend, and he asked the couple if they wanted to join them on an evening boat ride.

After the boat crash that night, Perez was found on a jagged rock, but his girlfriend, Alvarez, disappeared into the dark waters off Bimini in the Bahamas.