PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) – State environmental officials say criminal charges won’t be filed after a fatal boating accident in Rhode Island.
The Newport Daily News reports the Department of Environmental Management said Thursday it determined 75-year-old Frank Teixeira, of Portsmouth, wasn’t speeding or operating his 28-foot motorboat recklessly when it collided with a two-person sailboat during a regatta in Narragansett Bay Aug. 11.
Sixty-year-old Sandra Tartaglino, of Tiverton, was thrown from the sailboat into the water near the Claiborne Pell Newport Bridge and later pronounced dead.
DEM officials in a statement said the attorney general’s office agreed that the facts and circumstances didn’t rise to the level of criminal conduct.
Teixeira is being cited with four violations of Coast Guard rules and could be fined.
Investigators previously said alcohol wasn’t a factor.
