Two skippers involved in the fatal collision on the Wadden Sea in 2022 were sentenced on Friday to community service of 240 hours and suspended prison sentences of three months. Four people died and four were injured in the accident.
A twelve-year-old boy was never found. According to the court, both boats were traveling too fast. The skippers also did not communicate well with each other. The court’s punishment is higher than the Public Prosecution Service (OM) demanded. It previously demanded community service of 180 hours and suspended prison sentences of three months.
The 35-year-old water taxi skipper and the 49-year-old ferry captain were on trial on suspicion of manslaughter and inflicting serious bodily harm.
The boating accident happened in the early morning of October 21, 2022. A ferry and a water taxi collided in the Schuitengat, a fairway southwest of Terschelling. The two skippers did not reach a clear agreement in their mutual communication about how they would pass each other and collided.
A 57-year-old from Leeuwarden and a 46-year-old from Sexbierum were killed instantly. The body of the third victim washed ashore on Terschelling two weeks after the accident. A search for a twelve-year-old boy went on for weeks, but he was never found. Four others were injured, one seriously. No one was injured on the ferry.
‘Wouldn’t have happened if suspects had followed the rules’
“If both suspects had followed the rules, this accident would not have happened,” the public prosecutors said in early July during a hearing in the Leeuwarden court. Both skippers were speeding at the time of the accident.
The water taxi skipper said he didn’t remember anything. He only remembers being in contact with the ferry near Terschelling. “The next moment I was hanging on the tip of the boat,” he said. The captain of the ferry believed that “there was no speed limit”.
Relatives of the fatal victims previously called on the suspects to admit their mistakes. “How difficult can it be to take responsibility for your mistakes?” asked the woman who lost her 46-year-old husband and 12-year-old son.