A Miami tugboat captain was browsing internet marketplaces on his cellphone when his barge plowed into a small sailboat carrying children from a summer sailing camp in Biscayne Bay last July, killing three girls, federal prosecutors announced Tuesday. Yusiel Lopez Insua, 46, of Miami, was charged with seaman’s manslaughter in connection with the July 28, 2025, collision that claimed the lives of 7-year-old Mila Yankelevich, 13-year-old Erin Ko Han, and 10-year-old Arielle “Ari” Buchman, according to CBS Miami.
The charge, announced by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida, paints a devastating picture of negligence. Insua faces up to 10 years in federal prison if convicted. U.S. Attorney Jason A. Reding Quiñones said the case alleges a preventable loss of life, citing the failure to follow basic maritime safety rules and cellphone use during transit.
The collision occurred at approximately 11:15 a.m. between Hibiscus Island and Monument Island in Biscayne Bay. Insua was operating a 25-foot tugboat named the Wood Chuck, pushing a 108-foot long, 149-gross ton construction barge at the time, according to the Hanford Sentinel, citing the Associated Press. The crew had been disassembling a seawall at a home on Star Island and was hauling concrete debris to an empty lot on Di Lido Island in Miami Beach.
The barge’s forward view from the tugboat’s pilothouse was obstructed by a deckhouse and a construction crane, prosecutors said. No one aboard the tugboat or barge was assigned as a lookout during transit. The vessel was not equipped with cameras or a radar system that could have aided forward visibility, according to Local 10 News.
A forensic review of Insua’s cellphone revealed internet activity on online marketplaces during the transit, including at or near the time of the collision, NBC News reported. The tugboat’s radio was also tuned to a channel used to communicate with drawbridge operators rather than an emergency channel — even though the boat’s path did not include any drawbridges, according to prosecutors.
The struck vessel was a 17-foot Hobie Getaway sailboat carrying one 19-year-old camp counselor and five children. The small craft had stalled in the barge’s path due to a lack of wind, leaving those aboard helpless as the massive barge bore down on them. The counselor and two children survived after being dragged under the barge, but three children were trapped in the wreckage and drowned.
Two of the girls — ages 7 and 13 — were pronounced dead at the hospital. The third child, 10-year-old Arielle Buchman, died two days later on July 30 after being hospitalized in critical condition. The children had been in their last week of sailing camp at the Miami Yacht Club, a program for children aged 7 to 15, according to NBC 6 South Florida.
Prosecutors alleged that the tragedy was not an isolated lapse in judgment. According to the charging document, Insua had several near misses with sailboats in that same section of Biscayne Bay in the days leading up to the fatal collision. He had been operating the Wood Chuck for 12 years, suggesting deep familiarity with the waterway and its hazards.
The U.S. Coast Guard had recommended criminal charges in the incident as far back as October 2025, months before the formal announcement. Insua waived his right to prosecution by indictment and agreed to face the allegations as presented in the filing, according to court documents reviewed by CNN.
One of the surviving children was identified as 7-year-old Calena Areyan Gruber. The emotional toll of the disaster has reverberated far beyond the families directly affected, shaking the tight-knit sailing community in Miami and prompting renewed scrutiny of commercial vessel operations in recreational waterways.
The case underscores what federal authorities described as a cascade of safety failures — an obstructed view, no lookout, no radar, a mistuned radio, and a captain allegedly distracted by his phone. For three families, those failures proved fatal, turning a summer afternoon on the water into an unimaginable tragedy.
