A man accused of killing his stepson and another young man on the Tennessee River faces charges that alcohol and drugs caused the tragedy.
The Hamilton County grand jury indicted Bradley Crain, 48, on two counts of criminally negligent homicide and one count of boating under the influence. Crain, who lives in the Lupton City neighborhood, was arrested Tuesday.
A state report accuses him of being under the influence of alcohol and drugs while onboard his 14-foot fishing boat on May 5, 2009. “Improper anchoring” caused the vessel to capsize in choppy waters, the report says.
Crain swam to safety, but investigators found the bodies of his stepson, Jeremy Landers, 23, and Landers’ friend, Jamichael Russell, 22, floating face down several days after the crash near the Rivermont Park boat ramp.
Reached Thursday, Crain declined to comment except to say he doesn’t have an attorney.
Glenn Moates, assistant chief of the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency boating division, declined to identify the drugs detected in Crain’s system. But he said it’s unknown whether they impaired him like “we know the alcohol did.”
Moates said prosecutors will be able to prove negligence.
“All the facts together led to that charge,” he said. “The totality of everything he did — drugs and alcohol, improper anchoring, hazardous water.”
Crain was released from the Hamilton County Jail on Wednesday after posting a $5,000 bond.
The two deaths were among 22 statewide boating fatalities in 2009, seven of which were alcohol-related. Hamilton and Davidson counties accounted for one-third of Tennessee’s 153 boating-under-the-influence arrests in 2009, according to TWRA documents.
There have been 99 accidents and 16 fatalities on the state’s waterways in 2010. Since the deaths are under investigation, it isn’t known how many resulted from drinking.
“If there’s no serious injury, we won’t obtain a blood sample from the operator,” said Moates. “So most of the time we don’t know if it’s alcohol-related or not.”
On first offense, boating under the influence carries a $250 fine and loss of boating privileges for one year.
“It’s up to a judge, but there’s usually no jail time,” Moates said.
An effort to make BUI punishment equal with driving under the influence — which carries a 48-hour jail sentence on first offense — failed in a state Legislature subcommittee in March.
Introduced by Chattanooga legislators Rep. Richard Floyd and Sen. Bo Watson, both Republicans, the bill’s researchers submitted a document that indicated a burden on local governments in which the cost of incarcerating offenders would outweigh civil penalty collections by 5-to-1, records show.
“Anybody that’s been out on Chickamauga Lake realizes how congested it is,” Watson said. “It’s a huge safety issue and something we tried to correct. But a great bill can have a significant cost.”
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Chris Carroll covers politics for the Times Free Press. A Chattanooga native, he graduated from Red Bank High School in 2005 and earned a bachelor’s degree in history from East Tennessee State University in 2009. Chris has investigated violent crime, hospitals, Red Bank politics and East Ridge politics since joining the newspaper in January 2010. For a jailhouse interview story with accused murderer Antonio Henry, he won a third place Tennessee Associated Press Managing Editors ...
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