O’Leary boat crash details still awaited
More than two weeks after a fatal boat collision involving celebrity entrepreneur Kevin O’Leary, police decline to disclose any findings of their investigation, such as who was behind the wheel.
Shortly before midnight on Aug. 24, two boats collided on Lake Joseph in Ontario’s cottage country. Gary Poltash, a 64-year-old man from Florida, and Suzana Brito, a 48-year-old woman from Uxbridge, Ont., were killed. Three other people were taken to hospital and released, the Ontario Provincial Police said.
“The location of the crash — because it’s on the water — the investigation will take a little longer, so we can’t comment any further,” said Const. Joe Scali shortly after the incident.
O’Leary, a one-time federal Conservative leadership candidate who stars in the ABC show Shark Tank, said he was a passenger on one of the boats. In a statement released four days after the incident, O’Leary said the other boat did not have its navigation lights on and fled the scene.
But the OPP told the Toronto Sun that both boats left the scene and the vessel carrying the injured passengers sought medical help. Police have not commented on the navigation lights.
O’Leary’s agent, Jay Sures, told CNN that the entrepreneur’s wife, Linda, was driving the boat at the time of the crash, but police have not confirmed this.
O’Leary owns a property on the north end of Lake Joseph in the Muskoka region, which has been a summer getaway for many celebrities including Cindy Crawford, Paul Bronfman and actor Harry Hamlin.
Questions are also unanswered about what the people involved in the crash were doing earlier that evening. A fundraising event was taking place in the area for the CNIB. The venue was the CNIB Lake Joseph Centre, but organizers say neither O’Leary nor the victims were on the guest list.
“At this time, we have no reason to believe anyone involved (in the crash) attended the event,” wrote Shannon Simpson, communications director for CNIB, in an email to the National Post.
The son of victim Gary Poltash, Alex Poltash, has started a GoFundMe campaign. In the campaign description, Alex wrote that his father had become friends with the other victim, and the money would go to an education fund for her three children.