Boaters receive maximum jail sentence for Pineview Reservoir incident

The Standard reported today that the boaters involved in the Pineview incident in which Huntsville resident Esther Fujimoto was killed, received the maximum jail sentence.

 Boaters receive maximum jail sentence for Pineview Reservoir incident

Colton Raines, convicted at trial in February on charges of reckless endangerment and failure to render aid, both class A misdemeanors, and obstruction of justice, a class B misdemeanor, was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in Weber County Jail.

Robert Cole Boyer, convicted at the same trial as Raines, was sentenced to one year in Weber County Jail for obstruction of justice, his only charge.

Both sentences were the maximum allowed under law.

The sentencing of the two ends criminal proceedings in the Aug. 21, 2011, death of Esther Fujimoto. She bled to death from massive injuries caused by the defendants’ boat propeller as she swam the reservoir. A wrongful death lawsuit is pending.

Co-defendant Skyler Shepherd was also sentenced in January to the maximum 2 1/2 years on the same charges that Raines faced.

 Shepherd had a more active role, as he actually piloted the boat away from Fujimoto after she’d been hit.

The three men were not charged for the actual collision, considered an accident, but for failing to make any attempt to assist Fujimoto or inform authorities about her plight.
Second District Judge Ernie Jones, in announcing the sentences, said Raines showed a callous absence of caring for another human being.

He noted that Boyer had eight prior misdemeanor convictions, five involving alcohol.
In sentencing Shepherd, Jones had called him callous and spineless.

 The honorable Judge Ernie Jones threw the book at the three, although we think the book should have been a little thicker.