Mechanical failure ruled out in crash
SANDPOINT — Mechanical failure does not appear to have played a role in a fatal motorboat crash on Lake Pend Oreille on Saturday night.
An inspection of the 21-foot Malibu Wakesetter involved in the collision revealed no mechanical defects, according to Bonner County Sheriff Marine Patrol Sgt. Anker Rasmussen.
Speed and inattention continue to be leading factors in the collision which killed Darby and Amber Campbell and injured a third occupant. Investigators are awaiting toxicology results to determine if Darby, the driver of the boat, had been drinking.
The motorboat crashed into crossbeams and pilings on the west side of the Long Bridge shortly before 11:30 p.m. Authorities believe Darby, 30, and Amber, 34, were killed upon impact.
The crash’s lone survivor, whom sheriff’s officials identified as 31-year-old Gerred Campbell, was treated at Bonner General Hospital and released on Sunday. Marine patrol supervisor Lt. Cary Kelly said Gerred Campbell indicated he shares the same last name as the couple by coincidence, not by relation.
Rasmussen and Kelly estimated the boat was traveling up to 40 mph when it slammed into the bridge.
The nighttime speed limit on Bonner County waterways is 25 mph and no-wake zones extend 200 feet from bridges and shorelines.
“We do have corroboration every place we can find that this boat was going at a pretty good clip,” Kelly said
An eyewitness who was driving across the bridge when he saw the boat closing in at speed, said Kelly.
The eyewitness said the vessel’s navigation lights were operable. However, those lights would have made the boat visible to others and not provided any forward illumination. The boat was equipped with a tow rope tower topped with four small spotlights, with two pointing forward and two pointing aft.
Kelly said the eyewitness indicated that the small spotlights were not illuminated. Marine patrol officials suspect the small spotlights would have likely interfered with, rather than aided, the driver’s eyes adjusting to nighttime conditions.
Tuesday’s inspection of the badly wrecked vessel showed the throttle lever was at full-forward, indicating the engine was running at or near full speed, Kelly said.
The collision has raised questions whether there is adequate lighting or markings for navigable or non-navigable passages under the bridge. The bridge has a lighted red and green marker denoting the main channel of the Pend Oreille River.
But Kelly said the river channel is closer to the south end of the bridge and rarely utilized by boaters who coming from the north shore of the lake.
Saturday’s crash came on the seven anniversary of the last motorboat-related fatality on the Pend Oreille. Michael Wagar, a 46-year-old from Greenacres, Wash., was last seen leaving Bayview on the Fourth of July weekend in 2003.
The 15-foot aluminum runabout Wagar was helming was found capsized south of Maiden Rock and his body has never been found. Wager presumably drowned when the boat overturned in foul weather and his body sunk to a depth where it’s too cold for human decomposition to produce the gasses that can cause submerged bodies to surface.
The last non-drowning motorboat fatality occurred 15 or 16 years ago, when a boater turning around in the river near Thama misjudged the shoreline and collided with a dock, Kelly said.