[taco.vidal]

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/loca...138834953.html

MARCH 16, 2017 8:46 AM
Marlins pitcher Jose Fernandez to blame for fatal boating crash, investigation concludes

BY DAVID OVALLE
dovalle@miamiherald.com

Miami Marlins pitcher Jose Fernandez – drunk, high on cocaine and speeding – was behind the wheel and to blame when his boat plowed into a jetty off South Beach, killing two others, police concluded in a report released Thursday.

Had Fernandez lived, he would likely have been charged with a host of crimes including manslaughter, according to the final report by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

Investigators made the conclusion because the physical damage to Fernandez’s body matched the damage on the boat’s center console. His DNA was also found on the throttle and steering wheel.

The boat, investigators concluded, was traveling at more than 65 miles per hour, the top speed of the vessel.

“Fernandez operated [the boat] with his normal faculties impaired, in a reckless manner, at an extreme high rate of speed, in the darkness of the night, in an area with known navigational hazards such as rock jetties and channel markers,” the report concluded.

The release of the report comes nearly six months after Fernandez and two others were killed when the pitcher’s boat plowed into a jetty at Government Cut off South Beach before dawn on Sept. 25. Two others on the boat with him, Emilio Jesus Macias, 27, and Eduardo Rivero, 25, also were killed.