1 dead after fishing boat crashes on rocks near Golden Gate Bridge
By Tim Fang
One person died after a fishing boat on San Francisco Bay crashed into large rocks near the Golden Gate Bridge early Thursday morning, officials said.
Around 6:10 a.m., firefighters from San Francisco, Southern Marin and Sausalito, along with the San Francisco Police Department Marine Unit and the U.S. Coast Guard, were called to the bridge.
Authorities received reports of a boat with three people on board that struck rocks on the Marin County side. San Francisco police said the rocks were underneath the bridge, and that the vessel began to capsize.
According to the Southern Marin Fire District, the Coast Guard reached the boaters and removed them from the water. Officials said one of them was in cardiac arrest.
San Francisco police took the boaters to the Marin County shoreline, where they received additional care.
In an update posted at 10:25 a.m., the SFPD said that all three were taken to a hospital in Marin County with life-threatening injuries. Despite life-saving efforts, one of the people on board succumbed to his injuries and died at the hospital during surgery, the fire district said.
The Marin County Sheriff’s Office identified him as 35-year-old San Jose resident Daniel Zhengyu Qin.
The second patient remained in critical condition and the third patient was in stable condition. Authorities have not said what led up to the collision.
Coast Guard Boatswain Richard Smith said when crews arrived, the 22-foot recreational fishing vessel was pinned between two rocks and was in the process of capsizing, with two boaters in the water and the third still on board. All three boaters had life vests on, Smith said, adding that it was still very dark when the boat struck the rocks.
“When we arrived on scene, it was still pretty dark and our crew members had a difficult time actually identifying people while they were in the water, and we actually had to use our spotlights to identify them,” Smith said.
Smith added that there was slightly restricted visibility because of the fog, but nothing significant. The incident was under investigation by the Coast Guard.
The San Francisco Fire Department said it regularly trains with the Coast Guard, police, and Marin County firefighters for Golden Gate Bridge response scenarios and water rescues.
“This type of quick, multi-agency coordination is the direct result of ongoing joint training,” firefighters said in a statement. “That includes marine drills, unified command exercises, and shared radio communication systems, so when a call comes in near jurisdictional lines, all agencies are operating from the same playbook.”
The Marin County Sheriff’s Office said its marine unit recovered the capsized boat and towed it to Coast Guard Station Golden Gate at Horseshoe Cove east of the bridge’s North Vista Point, where the San Francisco Police Department would process it for evidence.
The Sheriff’s Office said the cause of the collision was under investigation, and a post mortem examination with toxicology testing was to be completed by next week. The cause and manner of death is pending following investigations by the United States Coast Guard, Marin County Sheriff’s Office, and San Francisco Police Department.
