Survivor recalls terror before boat sank
BRANSON, Mo. — “Grab the baby!”
Those were the last words Tia Coleman recalls her sister-in-law yelling before the tourist boat they were on sank into a Missouri lake, killing 17 people, including nine of Coleman’s family members.
A huge wave hit, scattering passengers into Table Rock Lake, Coleman said, recounting the ordeal from a hospital bed. When the Indianapolis woman came up for air, she was alone. She prayed. “I said, ‘Jesus please keep me, just keep me so I can get to my children,’ ” Coleman told television station KOLR.
She spotted a rescue boat and swam as fast as she could. Coleman’s husband and three children, 9, 7 and 1; her sister-in-law and nephew; her mother-in-law and father-in-law; and her husband’s uncle all died Thursday night.
State and federal investi- gators were trying to determine why the vessel, originally built for military use in World War II, sank. An initial assessment blamed storms and winds that approached hurricane strength, but Steve Paul, a private inspector in the St. Louis area, said Saturday that he warned the company in August about design flaws putting the watercraft at greater risk of sinking.
The U.S. Coast Guard, meanwhile, said the boat passed an inspection in February.
Twenty-nine passengers and two crew members were aboard. Fourteen people survived, including two adults who remained hospitalized Saturday. Coleman and her 13-year-old nephew were the only of the 11 members of her family to make it out alive.
Investigators say no one was wearing a life jacket.
The company’s website said Saturday that its operations would remain closed to support the investigation and allow time for families and others to grieve.