River Patrols Had Lapsed, Witnesses Say. Then, a Little Girl Almost Died

Sheriff's Office Disputes Boating-Accident Allegation

Deputy Bill Maher, Vianca Grullon and Chief Domenic Paniccia.

When I drove down to Knight’s Marina about a month ago, I wasn’t looking to write the story you’re reading here. I was investigating the possibility that the vessel involved in the near drowning of 15-month-old Vianca Grullon was fundamentally flawed. The boat was a Seadoo Switch—a most ironic name for a vessel which has displayed a tendency to “flip.”

Since then, I’ve written two stories on the Switch, which have been published on Clay News & Views, as well as on my boating site Loose Cannon.

Knight’s Marina is a 30-slip facility that lies at the confluence of Black Creek and the St. Johns River. Alongside is the busiest boat launching facility in Clay County. The marina has a small community of people who are permanently docked there, some of whom live on their boats. They’re a friendly, plain-spoken bunch.

I wanted to know whether anyone there had actually witnessed the Switch flip. The accident happened early Sunday evening on August 25. At the time, a group of marina people had been sitting outside the office shooting the breeze, as they often do. They remembered seeing the boat in question zipping past the marina throughout the day. A Switch can really zip; it has a top speed of around 35 mph.

A couple marina people noticed the boat moments before the accident as it carried a family of six, happily bopping along. The marina people recalled being engaged in a conversation, then looking inward, away from the water. When they glanced back at the water again, the black plastic hull was bobbing in the chop. It’s former occupants were floundering in the water, hollering for help.

Nobody saw the boat actually flip.

However, it was during this exchange that one of the marina people said, “None of that (accident and subsequent rescue) would have happened if Bill had been here.” Heads nodded in agreement.

“Bill” is former marine deputy William Maher. According to Sheriff’s records, Maher had been transferred to shoreside duties on July 1, and the marina people insisted there hadn’t been a deputy patroling out front ever since. According to them, Maher had been taken away and replaced by no one.

This story is an attempt to evaluate their claims of a lapse in law enforcement, using public records from the Sheriff’s Office as a means to obtain clarity. In the end, my findings were as murky as the waters of the St. Johns River itself. Read on.

This is a publicity photo from BRP, manufacturer of the Seadoo Swith. As you can see, the 13-foot model can really scoot.

‘Help! We Can’t Swim’

By now, most readers have probably heard about the determined duo of firefighters who caught a ride on a shrimper’s boat to the scene, and how one of them dove until he almost drowned and saved Vianca. The buoyancy of her lifejacket had pinned her to the floor of the overturned boat. She was hard to find in the darkness.

What isn’t commonly known is that two of the marina people jumped into the marina’s workboat and were pulling the adults aboard within a couple minutes of the incident. None of the people form the boat could swim, and the father, William Grullon, was standing on top of the overturned boat “freaking out,” yelling for someone to save his baby.

Chaos reigned. Vianca’s mother kept jumping back into the water to save her child, but, because she could not swim, the men had to re-rescue her and re-rescue her again. One of the marina guys dove in and tried to get under the boat.

Still standing on the hull, the father kept moving around causing the boat’s fence assembly to move up and down like a cleaver. “The boat kept coming down and hitting my buddy on the head,” said the other rescuer from the marina.

Afterward, they regretted that there hadn’t been a cop on the water to get dad off the boat and impose order at the scene. Vianca spent more than 10 minutes under water before being rescued.

The marina people were trying to pull her out five or six critical minutes earlier but couldn’t. “I just couldn’t hold my breath as long as him,” the diver from the workboat said, with a nod to the firefighter who did succeed.

(Attempts were made to interview Vianca’s father, William Grullon. The messages were not answerered. Maher did not respond to messages either.)

Deterrent

Witnesses said the Seadoo Switch had raced past the marina throughout the day, its operator ignoring the two “Go Slow” buoys that flanked the entrance to Black Creek, just before the Highway 17 bridge. For years, they said, Maher had stationed his center-console here on busy summer weekends, enforcing safety rules, educating the inexperienced and chewing out the knuckleheads.

“Do you know how many people he saved out here? A lot,” one of the marina people said. “He did a lot of good stuff. Everybody knows.”

(At this point, it should be said that none of the people interviewed for this story wanted to be quoted by name, saying they feared retribution from the Sheriff’s Office, especially since deputies like to congregate nearby, in a quiet corner of the launch ramp parking lot—sometimes as many as six cruisers-worth. As one person interviewed for this story said, “Sheriffs’ departments are one of the most powerful institutions in Florida. I do not want to get involved in the internal politics of this one.”)

For sure, Maher would have ordered the family to slow the boat down in the vicinity of the ramp and bridge, he said. Of course, telling someone to slow down in a boat that can be come unstable during deceleration and even at slow speeds might not have been the solution, but there was another matter.

Child Dies After Seadoo Switch Flips in Virginia

The Seadoo Switch is like a pontoon boat in that it is a tri-hull design so it can carry more people than the average 13-foot conventional monohull.

Had he been there, however, Maher might have considered the vessel to be overloaded because it sure would have looked that way. With six people on board (including the infant), the Grullons were in technical violation of the boat’s stated five-person capacity and possibly, too, the maximum 825-pound weight limit, which would include things like coolers.

That would be grounds for Maher to order the Grullons to either drop off passengers or terminate the voyage. Plus, northeast winds had kicked up a chop that day—a likely factor in the accident.

Without a deterrent like Maher, marina people said, more boaters ignored the go-slow buoys over this past summer. At this marina, they don’t actually have to see a speeding boat to know that one is going by. Wakes rock the docked boats, rattle mast rigging and undulate the floating dock. Marina people could see there wasn’t a police presence, but they could also hear and feel the absence.

This was the first summer in several years that Maher and his boat did not have a presence in the vicinity. According to one of the marina people, the first day that a sheriff’s vessel was sighted out front was after the season had ended on Friday, October 11.

This photo was shot on Saturday, Oct. 12. The Friday before was the first time a sheriff’s patrol boat had been noticed at the entrance to Black Creek in three months.

Logs? What Logs?

Okay, so now you know what I was told and observed. Using Florida’s Sunshine Laws, it should be easy to check, right? Just ask for logs for the two county marine patrol boats, and see whether the patrol tempo had lessened after Maher’s tranfer in early July. Brenda Lombardo is Sheriff’s Office point person for this kind of request:

Me: Good Morning, I am writing to request a record of the use of marine patrol boats during the period of May 1, 2024 and Sept. 1, 2024, specifically I would like to know whether boats were launched for patrol on those days or whether they remained on trailers. Also, when a boat or boats were launched, I would like to know which officers were onboard which boat during each day of that period, Thanks in advance.

Brenda: The agency does not log boat launches. We have two marine deputies and their shift/duties are on the water, unless they are fueling, maintenance, driving to the boat ramp or training. The agency also has a boat in the water at all times stored on an electric boat lift, which eliminates some launches. The deputies were working during the time specified. They work 12 hours shifts and rotate a red and blue schedule. There are patrol deputies trained for marine deploys in cases of emergencies.

FOLLOW UP

Me: So, you are saying that if I gave you a date—say June, 7, 2021—the Clay County Sheriff's Department could not tell me for certain that one, or two, or neither of its boats was being operated by a deputy or deputies on patrol?

Brenda: We log calls. I can provide their call log. But it doesn't indicate what time they launched the boat and it does not indicate which boat they used. This is a log of calls they were dispatched to or self initiated. I did state in my email that both deputies worked during the time frames you specified. Is there something specific I can research for you?

So, If I had insisted, Lombardo could have rounded up the information for June 7—which happens to have been Boater Skip Day at Bayard Point—but getting the equivalent of a log from May to September would have been a gargantuan ask.

Lombardo’s assertion that “two deputies were working during the time specified” came from from Chief Domenic Paniccia, a department head for the marine unit. In a more recent email exchange, Paniccia said something a little different about “the perception of a gap in coverage during the summer.” He wrote:

When we transitioned between Marine units, we ensured continuity by utilizing certified operators from our Emergency Preparedness Unit. We also coordinated with our mutual partners, including Green Cove Springs Police Department, Orange Park Police Department, Fish & Wildlife, St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office, Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office, and the U.S. Coast Guard.

Green Cove Springs has a center-console police boat on a lift at Spring Park. The city’s waterfront is small, extending only from the piers at Reynolds Industrial Park to the vicinity of Governors Creek. In the past, however, there had been an understanding with the county that expanded Green Cove’s jurisdiction to Bayard Point in the south and to include Black Creek itself north of the city.

The Knight’s Marina waterfront was part of Green Cove’s Black Creek jurisdiction, but that memo of understanding expanding the city’s turf is no longer in effect. And the Sheriff’s Office did not ask Green Cove Springs police for help filling in over the summer.

Sheriff’s Office Responds

Addressing the allegation that the Sheriff’s Office might be indirectly responsible for the August 25 accident, Paniccia wrote:

To suggest our lack of coverage resulted in this tragic incident is unfair. We cannot be at every mile of waterway just like we cannot be at every crash that occurs on our approximate 600 square miles of roadway. This incident occurred late in the evening, about an hour and a half after our shift concluded, and FWC was actively on the waterway and leading the investigation, indicating that no further assistance was required from our unit who was also enroute back.

The accident was reported at 7:17 p.m. On that date, the sun set around 8 p.m. Emergency call logs indicate no sheriffs’ vessel was in the water. Green Cove police were rushing to launch their boat, and a Jacksonville Fire & Rescue vessel was underway. Both stood down when the emergency was reported to have ended. Fish & Wildlife (FWC) was underway but didn’t arrive until it was all over

(It should be noted that a Clay County’s Fire & Rescue boat, which is stored at the lake Asbury station, did not arrive until after the emergency had ended, either.)

The other marine patrol deputy is department veteran Joseph “Brooks” Morrell, whose principal patrol area is Doctors Lake. Apparently, Morrell had finished his shift, and was alerted and on the way to one of the boats when he too was told to stand down. Here’s what Paniccia said:

We can agree that the marine unit on that day concluded their 12-hour shift and was off duty when this incident occurred. He was responding back to the incident when he was informed by the Investigating agency, FWC, that they required no further assistance.

So, the Sheriff’s Office has essentially denied the Marine Unit was ever shorthanded during summer. It had been a mistaken perception. Meanwhile, rumors circulated about why Maher’s superiors had taken him off the water without a qualified officer to replace him. The rumors, of course, assumed that short-staffing was more than just a perception.

Ninety-Eight Bucks

In for a penny…etc. Clay News & Views agreed to pay for the release of Maher’s personnel file to figure out why a guy respected by a waterfront constitutency was “laterally transferred to a patrol position.” He’d been a deputy since 2017, in the Marine Unit since February 2019.

“Rough around the edges” is how you might describe the officer after reading the reports.

Documents showed that being a marine patrol officer was important to Maher, both during his tenure with the county and in previous jobs. His performance evaluations had been reasonably good until recently, though he had received formal counseling for minor transgressions. He also had received praise for his dedication to best practices, emphasis on safety and friendly manner with the public.

The year 2024 was not so good for him. There was an incident between Maher and a female deputy while partying off-duty at “Redneck Beach” on Black Creek. The exchange was verbal not physical, but it was ugly, and it was public.

Another controversy arose in June during Boater Skip Day when, according to a personnel-file report, Maher’s superiors learned that he had not reported a mechanical problem with one the outboards. The problem was routine in nature, and would be recognized as such by any owner of an outboard motor, but supervisors insisted they should have been notified anyway.

Day after Skip Day, according to a the same report, Maher found himself in Paniccia’s office getting chewed out for “handling Sheriff’s property roughly or carelessly.” He was told that the county had spent $763 to fix the engine, implying that $763 was a big sum for an outboard repair. Paniccia wrote that Maher mouthed off to him as he was leaving the office.

Paniccia quoted Maher as saying, "I don't take Director Barnes fishing like his little buddy." The reference was to David Barnes, director of Patrol and Community Affairs, who reports directly to the sheriff. The little buddy was Paniccia.

Consequences

Maher never apologized for accusing Paniccia of being an ass-kisser, an insinuation that would be unproductive in a civilian setting, let alone in the top-down management culture of a police department. According to Paniccia, Barnes ordered Maher off the Marine Unit on June 27, effective on July 1.

Soon new administrative charges were lodged after Maher had to respond to a call using the boat normally assigned to Morrell. Afterwards, Morrell informed Paniccia that his boat had come back damaged.

The damage was a broken-off transducer and a scratch to the cowling—that is the plastic cover—of the outboard motor. A third-party vendor has installed power-posts (mechanisms to anchor the boat in shallow water) too close to the center line of the boat, so the outboard rubbed against them during turns. Nothing in the record explains why the boat that didn’t steer right was kept in service even after the problem became known.

Transducers being damaged or breaking off happens a lot on center-console boats, and Maher said he hadn’t even noticed it gone. He had noticed the scratches but didn’t think they were “that serious.”

Nevertheless, the Sheriff’s Office launched a full-blown Internal Affairs investigation that took sworn testimony. On August 26, IA staff issued a 13-page report whic found Maher guilty of treating Sheriff’s Office property carelessly and failing to report damage.

Maher was not fired. He has continued to perform regular duties.

One way to look at this story is to think about that old Chaos Theory metaphor, the one in which a butterly flapping its wings in Brazil causes a slight disturbance that somehow goes on to cause a tornado in Texas.

Did a moment of insolence in an office in Middleburg help create the conditions for an accident to happen at the mouth of Black Creek? The folks at Knight’s Marina would say yes. The Sheriff’s Office says no.

Meanwhile, Maher’s old marine patrol slot has been filled by a deputy named Adam Kent, and Paniccia has promised to make the Marine Unit more visible to the folks at Knight’s Marina. “I will communicate with our marine team to increase their visibility in that location to address any concerns about boat wakes and other violations,” he said. “I will also have them make contact with the facility and slip occupants to reasure.”