A Miami tugboat captain who pleaded guilty in last year’s crash in Biscayne Bay involving a barge and a sailboat carrying campers that killed three young girls was sentenced to prison on Tuesday.
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Yusiel Lopez Insua, 46, pleaded guilty in July to seaman’s manslaughter for operating a barge with obstructed visibility and without a proper lookout in the July 28, 2025 incident.
On Tuesday, he was sentenced to 18 months in prison. He’ll turn himself in in December to begin serving the sentence.
Insua had been facing a maximum of 10 years in prison but he had admitted guilt to spare the victims’ families from going through a trial, and the prosecutor, defense and families had agreed to less time in prison.
“He is sick with grief and will hold this immense grief for the rest of his life,” defense attorney Walter Reynoso said after Tuesday’s sentencing hearing. “Yusiel and his family pray daily that God will give the families some measure of peace and strength as they carry this unimaginable loss for the rest of their lives.”
A group of five girls and their 19-year-old sailing instructor were on the sailboat when it was struck by the barge near Hibiscus Island.
The girls were in their last week of a sailing camp for children aged 7 to 15, according to the Miami Yacht Club.
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Three girls – 7-year-old Mila Yankelevich, 10-year-old Arielle Buchman and 13-year-old Erin Ko – were killed in the incident.
A fourth girl was hospitalized and later released, while the fifth girl and the instructor were treated at the scene.
Prosecutors said Insua was piloting a tugboat pushing the barge that was loaded with construction debris when it struck the sailboat.
The vessel’s forward view was obstructed by a deckhouse and crane, and no one aboard was assigned as a lookout, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida said in a news release.
Insua was also using his phone around the time of the collision, prosecutors said.
The counselor and two children escaped after being dragged under the barge but the other three girls were trapped in the wreckage and drowned, the release said.
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