🚨 He Had His Grandchildren On Board When The Boat Hit A Lit Marker — Police Say His BAC Was Twice The Legal Limit In Tragic Double Death

🚨 He Had His Grandchildren On Board When The Boat Hit A Lit Marker — Police Say His BAC Was Twice The Legal Limit In Tragic Double Death

Grandfather Charged with Homicide After Allegedly Drunk Boat Crash Killed His Grandchildren, Ages 7 and 9

Stephen Schneider, 64, has been charged with two counts of reckless vessel homicide after the boat he was piloting slammed into a lighted channel marker in Barnegat Bay, throwing his two young grandchildren into the water. Mya Bella Golabek, 9, and her brother Sigmund Paul “Siggy” Golabek, 7, died in hospital after being pulled from the dark water by their grandfather and his wife.

The crash happened around 9pm on 19 July off Berkeley Township on the Jersey Shore. Schneider was at the helm of a 30-foot Tidewater 280. Investigators say the wooden channel marker was properly illuminated. The impact ejected both children. They were wearing life jackets. Schneider later told police he found his grandson first, then his granddaughter, both face-down and unresponsive. CPR was started immediately. The children were taken to Community Medical Center in Toms River, where they were pronounced dead.

Schneider told New Jersey State Police he had drunk two Guinness beers and one Miller Lite in the two hours before the accident. Toxicology results later showed his blood alcohol content was approximately 0.16 — twice the legal limit. A detective’s affidavit stated he was “unfit to operate” and that his “alertness, sense of care and caution, perception, judgment, response time and coordination were markedly impaired by alcohol.”

On 14 August Schneider surrendered at Berkeley Township Police Department. He was charged with two counts of reckless vessel homicide, also known as death by vessel — second-degree offences that carry a possible 20-year prison sentence if convicted — plus operating a vessel under the influence and reckless operation of a vessel. He was initially held without bail. He has since been released pending trial after the children’s parents wrote letters to the court asking that their grandfather not remain in jail.

Mya and Siggy lived in Lacey. Their obituaries described them as more than brother and sister. “Mya and Siggy were not only brother and sister, but best friends who shared laughter, adventures, and countless memories. Now they continue their journey together, hand in hand.” Family photographs posted online show two smiling children on previous days out on the water. Those images now sit beside the charging documents.

The evening began as a family outing. Schneider, his wife and the two grandchildren were on the boat in Barnegat Bay, a stretch of water popular with recreational boaters. The channel markers exist precisely to keep vessels in safe water after dark. Hitting one at speed is the kind of collision that is almost always preventable. Prosecutors say the combination of alcohol and the decision to keep driving after drinking turned a summer night into a double funeral.

Assistant Prosecutor Kate Burke later told a court: “The defendant consumed enough alcohol to reach a BAC of approximately 0.16, and then operated a vessel. And the result was catastrophic.” The legal limit for operating a boat in New Jersey is the same as for a car. Schneider’s level was twice that. Three beers in two hours produced impairment that, according to the lab, affected every faculty needed to steer a 30-foot boat at night.

The children were wearing life jackets, yet they still died. Being thrown from a moving boat into the water, even with flotation, can cause drowning, blunt trauma or both. Schneider and his wife recovered them from the bay. That fact will almost certainly be part of any future trial: the same man accused of causing the crash was the first to try to save them.

The case has moved quickly from investigation to charging. New Jersey State Police completed toxicology work, reviewed the scene, confirmed the marker lights were working, and obtained Schneider’s own account of what he had drunk. The Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office approved the homicide charges. Schneider’s attorney has not publicly contested the basic sequence of events, only the decision to jail him before trial.

The children’s parents now face the impossible position of grieving two children while their own father or father-in-law faces prison for their deaths. Their letters asking for his release suggest a family trying to hold itself together rather than add another loss. That request was granted. Schneider is now free while the case proceeds.

Barnegat Bay is not an empty wilderness. It is a busy, marked waterway used by families every summer. Channel markers are there for a reason. A 64-year-old grandfather who had been drinking, operating a boat after dark, and striking a lit marker is the exact scenario the law is written to punish. Whether a jury will find the impairment and the crash sufficient for homicide convictions will be decided later. The facts already on the record are grim enough: two children dead, a grandfather charged with killing them, and a family that must now live with both the deaths and the accusation.

Mya was nine. Siggy was seven. They went out on the water with their grandfather on a July evening and never came home. The boat hit a marker that was lit. The man at the wheel had been drinking. Those are the facts that have now become a homicide case.