Police found the lifeless body of a man thrown into the ocean after a high-speed boat crash off Long Island yesterday morning.
Suffolk County police say Christopher Mannino’s body was recovered at about 1:30 p.m. yesterday under the Robert Moses Bridge after a nine-hour search.
Mannino, 39, of West Islip, was a passenger on the Silver Bullet, a 38-foot fishing boat, when a 25-foot Skater speedboat smashed into its side at around 4:50 a.m. in the Great South Bay.
The catamaran pilot, Brian Andreski, 26, was charged with boating while intoxicated.
The sport-fishing boat owner’s son Richard Leigh, Jr., 42, had invited Mannino along for the annual Bay Shore Mako fishing tournament, according to Leigh’s mother, Barbara, 73.
He was one of five passengers on the Silver Bullet, a 1967 Hatteras model boat. The other four people are safe with minor injuries.
When investigators arrived at the scene of the crash, they found the Skater upside-down and sinking, with a gaping hole on its side, and the Silver Bullet nearly sinking and severely damaged, said a Suffolk County PD spokeswoman.
The speedboat’s pilot and passenger were thrown into the water. They suffered non-life-threatening injuries. Andreski was hospitalized.
Leigh’s son Richard, 42, was captaining the boat at the time of the crash, and went later in the day to join the search party, his mother said.