Marine Patrol official says Blizzard's boat was speeding

The state’s lead investigator into a boating accident that killed a 34-year-old city resident two years ago says the vessel that crashed into a granite ledge on Diamond Island was traveling too fast for the conditions on Lake Winnipesaukee at the time.

Lieutenant Timothy Dunleavy of N.H. Marine Patrol told a Belknap County Superior Court jury yesterday that his investigation has lead him to believe that when the boat piloted by Erica Blizzard, 36, of Laconia, crashed head-on into the rock ledge that dark and rainy night, it was traveling at least 30 miles per hour.

“For that boat to be traveling that speed in those conditions — the rain, the night — it’s certainly an unsafe speed to be traveling on the lake,” he said.

At the second day of the trial, County Attorney Jim Carroll spent most of the day questioning Dunleavy about the complicated investigation that led to his conclusions.

Blizzard is charged with two alternative-theory counts of negligent homicide for allegedly causing the death of her friend, Stephanie Beaudoin, 34, of Meredith, and with aggravated boating while intoxicated. Blizzard suffered major injuries in the crash and another passenger and friend, Nichole Shinopulos, escaped with relatively unscathed.

Dunleavy said it’s harder to determine the cause of a boating accident than one that takes place on land. “It’s not like the roadside where debris remains where it lands,” he explained. “A boating accident is always moving… It (the vessel, or parts of it) will sink, and it will flutter when it sinks.”

In addition, there are no clear roadways on the water, he said. “So there’s no skid marks to tell you where someone started or stopped. And what (evidence is) there will move. It will drift along as long as it’s allowed to.”

Dunleavy based his conclusions about the boat’s speed on several pieces things, he said.

One was that the metal mounts that held the two 425-horsepower motors to the frame were virtually all broken off — something that would have taken a considerable amount of force, i.e., speed.

In addition, Dunleavy and his investigating crew found pieces of glass from the boat’s windshield embedded in a log cabin located near the shoreline.

One piece was in the cabin’s roof — on the side opposite from the waterfront. Dunleavy estimated it had traveled more than 57-feet to lodge itself into the shingles with such pressure.

Other pieces of glass were lodged into the side of the building — traveling almost 36-feet from where the boat had come to rest.

Using those two pieces of evidence, Dunleavy said Blizzard’s boat was going between 31 and 33 miles per hour when it crashed.

But James Moir, Blizzard’s attorney, questioned some of Dunleavy’s conclusions.

He pointed out that boats are built from fiberglass for speed and comfort, so they are less likely to be able to absorb a crash than a similarly sized automobile.

And he said Dunleavy’s idea of estimating the boat speed based on how far the pieces of glass had landed from the scene was faulty because it did not take into account the mass of the material.

“If I throw a piece of Styrofoam popcorn 20 miles per hour it’s not going to go as far as if I threw a metal ball,” he said. He also said that if any material “bounced” off anything it would make the theory invalid.

Dunleavy acknowledged those points but said it was impractical to imagine the glass pieces moving downwards when the boat’s body and crash evidence indicated that the vessel had virtually split in half — the top deck separating from the bottom hull — from its impact with the granite stone.

“The problem with the equation is that it’s typically used for very controlled circumstances,” Moir said. “You can measure exactly where a motorcycle was before it skidded because it’s a more controlled environment. You have absolute known starting point and ending point.

“But the difficulty is if you have to make assumptions about the starting point (of where the glass came from), about where the point of first contact (with the ledge) is,” he added.

“To a degree,” Dunleavy responded. “But I think if you look at the case of this glass and if you look at the end result you’re looking at a fraction of a mile per hour (difference).”

Before Dunleavy finished his testimony, he recounted meeting with Blizzard, Moir and Blizzard’s father, Paul Blizzard (owner of Lakeport Landing Marina) in September 2008. He said the young woman waived her Miranda rights during the interview and admitted that she had great difficulty seeing the water the night of the fateful crash. “She indicated it was like a black hole,” he said.

“And it started to rain heavily,” he recounted. “She slowed the boat but due to the winds and waves, it began rocking and they (the women) were getting sick so she brought the speed back up to plow through the waves. She said she was going about 30 miles per hour, then slowed down to 20 miles per hour. She was standing while she was operating the boat and she said she could not see the tip of the bow in front of her.”

Blizzard also told the Marine Patrol officer she had split an alcoholic drink with her friends on the boat; drinking while boating is not prohibited in New Hampshire unless it leads to impaired operations.

Before the trial resumed yesterday, Moir asked the court to disallow information Carroll plans to introduce details about the blood alcohol level of a sample taken at LRGH from Shinopulos.

Judge Kathleen McGuire refused Moir’s objection.

Blizzard’s attorney also wanted to disallow Dunleavy’s remarks about the boat speed being too fast, but Carroll objected, saying the purpose of the expert witness was to supply exactly that kind of information.

Again, the judge supported the county attorney.

Court proceedings are expected to resume today at 9 a.m. McGuire told the jury she expects the trial to end Thursday and deliberations to begin Friday.