JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Prominent Civil Rights attorney Ben Crump stood with grieving families Tuesday morning at Mt. Sinai Missionary Baptist Church in Jacksonville and demanded justice for the “Sapelo Seven” -- the seven elderly men and women who died over the weekend when a dock gangway collapsed in Georgia.
Four of the seven people who died were from Duval County.
Crump was joined by some survivors of the tragedy and the families of the victims during a news conference Tuesday, where he called on the federal government to get involved in the aftermath of the heartbreaking incident.
“Where is the leadership for the Sapelo Seven? Where is the leadership?” he asked.
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The catastrophe happened Saturday afternoon in Sapelo Island, Georgia, which is about 60 miles south of Savannah.
An estimated 700 people visited the largely unspoiled island for its annual fall Cultural Day event celebrating the island’s Gullah-Geechee community of slave descendants.
First responders say as many as 40 people were on the dock gangway when it collapsed, sending at least 20 people tumbling into the water.
The seven victims who died were identified as:
- Isaiah Thomas, 79, from Jacksonville
- Carlotta Mcintosh, 93, from Jacksonville
- Jacqueline Crews Carter, 75, from Jacksonville
- Cynthia Alynn Gibbs, 74, from Jacksonville
- Charles League Houston, 77, from Darien, Ga.
- Queen Welch, 76, Atlanta
- William Lee Johnson Jr., 73, from the Atlanta area
Some of the survivors reflected Tuesday on the horrors of being on the gangway when it collapsed.
One man spoke through tears as he recalled pulling himself up on the gangway and telling a woman near him, “Hold on to the guardrail if you want to live” because she wasn’t strong enough to pull herself out of the water.
He said he kept encouraging her to hold on to the bottom guardrail as she fought in the water, and eventually rescuers were able to get a cable to her and pull her to safety. She remained in the hospital with serious injuries Tuesday.
The man who shared his story wept into the arms of others on the stage afterward, and Crump pointed out that the survivors and family members are in desperate need of mental health counseling following the traumatic incident.
“We need the government to offer resources,” Crump said. “These Black senior citizens need resources, too. We need to make sure that we treat them as the great American citizens that they are.”
Regina Brinson, the niece of Isaiah Thomas, one of the four people from Jacksonville who died, said that when the dock collapsed, she had to choose between her life and her uncle’s.
“All of us ended up in the water. And then I realized I saw my uncle and I said, ‘Uncle, grab my hand!’ And he grabbed my hand, but he grabbed my shirt too, and he kept pulling me and pulling me under the water. And I kept saying to myself, ‘Oh my God, I’m going to die. I’m going to die.” I had to take his fingers one by one and peel them off of my shirt," Brinson said, describing the trauma.
Others with Crump shared the devastation and sorrow of losing a loved one in what they called a “preventable tragedy.”
Ebony, the granddaughter of 93-year-old Carlotta McIntosh, who died in the collapse, started by thanking a long-time friend for trying to save her grandmother during the chaos. Then, she described her grandmother, a retired special education school teacher, as the life of the party.
“She was vibrant. She was spunky. She was feisty. She was my world,” Ebony said. “She died doing exactly what she wanted to do: Live life to the fullest.”
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Crump said he is calling for a federal investigation on all levels. He said that if the victims had been all white, such an investigation would have been launched immediately.
“Had these been seven white people who died on that gangway, you would have federal investigations, you would have resources being offered to the community, you would not let this be swept under the rug,” Crump said. “So we’re calling on the leaders in our country, the ones who are vying for president of the United States, these are the American citizens who need your leadership now.”
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation is looking into the deadly incident. Crump said his team of attorneys is also looking into it. They say they are digging into the Georgia Department of Natural Resources as well as anyone who worked on the dock in the last few years in construction.
Crump is representing the families of three of those who died and one of the three people who remained hospitalized after the incident. He did not name the specific families he is representing.
Other victims are being represented by civil rights attorneys Bakari Sellers and Mario Pacella, both of Strom Law Firm.
Georgia authorities said they are investigating the “catastrophic failure” of the dock gangway.
“It is a structural failure. There should be very, very little maintenance to an aluminum gangway like that, but we’ll see what the investigation unfolds,” Georgia Department of Natural Resources Commissioner Walter Rabon said at a news conference, a day after the tragedy on Sapelo Island.
The gangway, installed in 2021, connected an outer dock where people board the ferry to another dock onshore.