A harrowing incident led to the deaths of many over the weekend. About 700 people attended Georgia’s Sapelo Island Cultural Day festival to honor the state’s small Gullah-Geechee community of Black slave descendants.
Isaiah Thomas, his niece Regina Brinson, and dozens of members of a Jacksonville-based senior citizens club were present. Thomas and his niece Brinson were at the island port assisting a family friend, Carlotta McIntosh, in crossing the gangway with her walker when Brinson heard a crack and the metal walkway abruptly collapsed under her feet, sending her into the water beneath the state-run ferry dock.
Later on, Brinson described how she watched in horror as McIntosh, 93, fell to her death from the broken gangway. Even so, she yelled, “Grab my hand!” to her 79-year-old uncle as powerful currents carried her and others who tumbled off from the shore.
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When Thomas attempted to hold his niece’s hand, he also grabbed her shirt, pulling her head beneath the water’s surface.
Days after the incident, Brinson broke down in tears as she recollected her fight for survival and the events that followed.
She lamented, “I had to take his fingers, one-by-one, and peel them off of my shirt. And I pulled him back up to the top, and I saw his face.”
“And I was like, `Oh my God, what did I do? What did I do?’ And he floated by me,” she said, according to the Associated Press.
Thomas and McIntosh are among seven persons aged 73 to 93 who died Saturday when the dock gangway collapsed while hundreds of people were waiting to board an afternoon ferry to return to the mainland.
They have been identified as Jacqueline Crews Carter, 75, of Jacksonville; Cynthia Alynn Gibbs, 74, of Jacksonville; Charles League Houston, 77, of Darien, Georgia; Queen Welch, 76, of Atlanta; William Lee Johnson Jr., 73, of the Atlanta area; Thomas, 79, of Jacksonville; and Mcintosh, 93, of Jacksonville.
In a recent news conference in Jacksonville, Brinson and the distraught families of two other deceased people supported civil rights lawyer Ben Crump as he urged the U.S. Justice Department to look into the matter.
Crump remarked, “These senior citizens were vibrant. They did not die of natural causes. They died of negligence.”
The relatives recalled how vibrant the victims were, despite their elderly ages. According to his sister Katrena Alexander, Thomas was a devoted churchgoer who volunteered at the soup kitchen. His family called him “Bubba.”
She recounted, “I don’t think you could find anybody any kinder. He would do anything you asked him to do. He would never say no.”
After recently returning from a cruise in December, McIntosh, 93, informed her granddaughter Ebony Davis that repeating the Serenity Prayer every day was the key to her longevity.
Davis said of her, “There there was no old in her. She was vibrant. She was spunky. She was feisty. She was my world. She died doing exactly what she wanted to do: live life to the fullest.”
Jacquelyn Carter, 75, a third member of the Jacksonville seniors, had numerous scheduled travels, according to her daughter Vanessa Williams. When she was at home, Carter would frequently visit friends who were unable to move, ensuring they had food and medicine, and even helping to clean their homes.
Williams stated, “There was nothing wrong with her. She was perfectly healthy and perfectly fine. And she should have come home.”
The state’s investigation into the failure of the aluminum gangway is being overseen by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, which runs the state docks.
Crump, on the other hand, has expressed doubts about the state’s ability to conduct an investigation. Along with a few family members, he wondered if the gangway might have collapsed due to the weight of too many people. According to officials, the metal snapped while it was holding roughly 40 individuals.
The Georgia Department of Natural Resources, however, told The Associated Press that engineers estimated the 80-foot (24-meter) gangway should have been able to sustain the weight of 320 people.
The dock was reconstructed in 2021 after Georgia authorities settled a lawsuit filed by Hogg Hummock residents who claimed the ferries and docks did not comply with federal accessibility standards for people with disabilities.
The same lawsuit charged McIntosh County with failing to provide enough resources for responding to emergencies on the island. When the county settled with locals in 2022, it agreed to construct a helicopter pad on Sapelo Island.
Residents who rushed to help rescue victims following the collapse, however, reported that the landing pad was still unfinished and that a helicopter used to transport people on Saturday had to land in an overgrown field with holes dug by wild boars.
