NEW YORK — A Staten Island-bound ferry slammed into the St. George terminal just before rush hour Wednesday, killing at least 10 passengers and injuring about 50 in what one survivor called a "death ride."
The 310-foot Andrew Barberi, carrying as many as 1,500 passengers from Manhattan, crashed into a slip after apparently failing to slow down during docking maneuvers, city officials and witnesses said.
The cause of the crash remained unknown Wednesday night. One of the boat’s two captains, Richard Smith of Staten Island, drove to his house and tried to kill himself by slitting his wrists and shooting himself with a pellet gun shortly after the accident, according to police sources. He was in critical condition, officials said.
Police sources Wednesday night said Smith had lost consciousness in the moments before the crash, but it was not clear why.
"All of a sudden I heard this explosion," said Paul Wiedemann, a lawyer who was dozing on the ferry as it hit the dock. "I saw pieces of the boat falling apart and people running to the back of the boat. … I saw the wood and things coming through the boat."
The 3,300-ton ferry barreled into the pier with such force it instantly crushed to death some people on the main deck and tore limbs from some near the bulkhead.
"It was chaos," said passenger Frank Corchado, 29, a mechanic who helped others after the crash. "It was just people everywhere, bodies everywhere on top of bodies."
The massive pier ripped a jagged hole that extended halfway along the vessel’s hull, shattering a row of windows a few feet above the waterline and peeling the steel bulkhead like a sardine can.
Corchado said he helped pull chairs off one injured man. "I held him in my arms and I tried to stop the bleeding," said Corchado, who had blood on his pants. "I don’t know if he died. We tried to stop the bleeding."
Passenger Luis Melendez, a senior clerk at a Manhattan brokerage firm, said, "There was some people standing on the front and all of a sudden I see two or three guys run back saying ‘We’re going to hit, we’re going to hit.’
"No sooner than they start running back, I started seeing the right side of the boat opening up like a can and there’s debris flying all over the place, glass, metal, wood. Whoever was sitting on that side, if they didn’t react right away, they were buried or they were severely lacerated."
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