Survivor of capsized boat surrounding Homer says he missed his Texas family’s final moments during suspected death trial

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – Newly released testimony from the putative death trial of a Texas family missing since a boat trip in early August provides new information about what are likely the final moments of the Maynard family’s lives.

The Texans are believed to have drowned after the fishing boat they shared with an Alaskan family capsized off the coast of Homer.

“We were fishing and had been at that spot for a short time, probably about two hours, when the boat started taking on water,” recalled Alea Perkovich, a member of the family of four from Alaska who survived.

Perkovich testified in a Homer courtroom last month that she was aboard the 28-foot aluminum fishing vessel with her husband Weston, the ship’s captain, the night it sank Aug. 3. her children and Texas family: David Maynard, 42; Maria, 37; Colton, 11; and Brantley, 7.

According to court officials, a jury is still considering the Maynard family’s request to have their family members declared dead. The request was made by Mary Maynard’s mother, Charlotte Huckaby.

“[Weston] He went back and forth between the captain’s seat, the engines and the back and said, ‘Okay, call the Coast Guard,'” Perkovich recalled through tears. “So David [Maynard] called his cell phone.”

“Mary [Maynard] went back and forth between the two of us where the radio was hanging. And I said, ‘Are you scared?'” Perkovich recalled. “And she said, ‘Yeah, this is coming to an end.’ And she buckled the last buckle on her life jacket and handed me the radio.”

Perkovich says she called Mayday on the radio and relayed the boat’s final coordinates.

“It took 10 minutes, maybe 10 minutes of us having fun, until the boat … rolled on its side like that, and then the engines stopped and just the nose went up.”

“I was just putting the coordinates into the radio and I dropped it and turned around and then I thought it was looking at my window, which was open, but it was above me,” Perkovich said. “It happened so quickly.”

She says that when she spoke on the phone she had her daughter in her arms and her son nearby. She handed her daughter through the cabin window to her husband, who threw the girl into a waiting lifeboat.

“[Weston] … fell off the side. I now know that he had to get the rope because he dropped the rope to the dinghy. So [our daughter] just floated away with the current.”

Once her family was safely in the lifeboat, Perkovich saw the fishing vessel sink below the surface of the water.

“And at that point there was nothing but the neck, I mean, the very bow of the boat, and we were so far away from it. I mean, yes [the current] pushed us so far away that it never came up. It just never came out,” Perkovich said. “I don’t know what happened. We don’t know what happened.”

Weston Gilmore also testified.

He says the group originally went trolling near Seldovia but had trouble with the downriggers. The group decided to head northwest to fish for halibut, then anchored and put some lines in the water once they found a spot.

“We got a little gas grill and a camp grill and we just hung out, fished and cooked hot dogs and burgers,” Gilmore said.

Gilmore says that at that time, David Maynard pointed out standing water near a seepage or drain hole. Gilmore said this wasn’t normal and decided to raise anchor and start his engines.

“But the engines never started and I ended up getting up from the wheel and going back on deck and there was more, the water level was rising,” Gilmore explained.

“I pulled the tailgate way down where there was a fuel tank. And when I did that, as soon as I opened the tank, it kind of floated up,” Gilmore said. “The hull was full of water, so I dropped it, immediately turned around and ran back to the cabin.”

He said he tried the engines again, to no avail. That’s when Gilmore said he told everyone to put on a life jacket and went back outside to secure the lifeboat.

While Gilmore’s family was in the dinghy, he said he went back to the capsized boat to try to help the Maynards.

“When I got there it had just fallen below the water level, but I stuck my arm in anyway,” he remembers.

“I held the boat with my left hand and stood with my face in the water as far as I could reach without sinking. And I was mentally flailing my arm around, just trying to touch something. I ended up grabbing our dog’s leg as he lay in the V-bunk.”

At about the same time, he said the bow rail fell on him, requiring him to push off the boat and go back to the dinghy.

“I just sat back and turned back in the direction I was swimming and noticed one of the coolers was there and there were other things floating around,” Gilmore said. “[I] didn’t see any people. And at that point I was just, I don’t know, trying to process what just happened.”

Not long after, a civilian ship, hearing the mayday call and coordinates, showed up to rescue Gilmore, Perkovich, and their two children.

Gilmore says the last time he saw one of the Maynards was the moment he left the cabin to secure the dinghy.

U.S. Coast Guard Commander Christopher Svencer said he was the search and rescue mission coordinator that day. The emergency call came in around 6 p.m. and crews searched for about 24 hours.

“During this time we received a report from one of the survivors that when they left the ship they saw it sinking with the Maynards on board the ship and we did not see them leave the cabin with the report.” passed on to us,” said Svencer, describing the search attempts.

“What we’re looking at is the most likely time frame for how long we should be looking for survivors of any kind. For this purpose, we use, among other things, the so-called survival probability decision aid.”

Svencer said that with the tool, the Maynards were estimated to have a functional survival time of seven hours and a cold survival time of about 10 hours.

“[Those times] would date from the moment the people entered the water around 6 p.m. the night before [Aug. 3]Given the amount of search efforts we had undertaken, the probability of survival based on that time frame, and also taking into account the report that the Good Samaritan and the survivor had no one off the ship, that led us to end our search at approximately 8 p.m were able to complete [6 p.m. on Aug. 4].”

According to Svencer, 1,236 nautical miles of track were searched, which corresponds to a search area of ​​1,420 square nautical miles.

After scanning the search area for about 24 hours, the Coast Guard made the “very difficult decision” to end the search.

“A suspected homicide hearing is a court hearing that takes place when one or more persons have disappeared and cannot be found after a careful search and the judge is satisfied that the circumstances of the disappearance provide reasonable cause for the belief “that the person died by accident or otherwise,” Judge Bride Seifert said Sept. 19 in a Homer courtroom as she prepared the jury.

The Maynard family has set up a Gofundme account to help with unexpected expenses. As of this publication, the account has surpassed its $15,000 goal and has raised over $21,000.

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