A fun holiday on the lake with friends, family, and fireworks was literally turned upside down and left a mother grieving the loss of her young child.
Four-year-old Tilly Roache, of Lithonia, died from delayed complications due to drowning, said Putnam County Coroner Hollis Harrison. Tilly was one of 12 people on a tritoon boat on Lake Oconee watching fireworks at Great Waters.
As it was leaving the fireworks show, the tritoon capsized and all 12 people were thrown into the water, according to information from the Putnam County Sheriff’s Office and the Georgia Department of Natural Resources.
Putnam Sheriff’s Lt. Harry Luke was patrolling the lake that evening and said he was within a few hundred yards of the incident when the call sounded on law enforcement’s radio. He said “a sea of boats” was leaving the fireworks, and many people witnessed the tritoon flip over and called 911. The callers also reported that a young child on the boat was missing.
“I got there and people were all in the water and we were trying to get them out of the water; but the majority of those people were wearing life jackets, and the child (Tilly) was wearing a life jacket,” Luke said. “So we were getting people out of the water and looking for the child.”
The many boaters who had been leaving the fireworks joined Luke and DNR game wardens in rescuing the people who had fallen overboard.
“So, there’s coolers, trash, shoes, clothing, pocketbooks, all that kind of stuff floating on the lake—we call it a debris field—it’s all out there, and we’re looking for this little girl,” Luke described.
It didn’t take long for them to realize young Tilly must be underneath the overturned pontoon. So, several people tried diving under it to search.
“They were trying to tread water and go under, and the boat’s bimini top was stretched across it, so they weren’t having any success,” Luke said.
Luke, a veteran law enforcement officer experienced in patrolling the lake for DNR and PCSO, said he attached a strap to the tritoon and eased it to the bank so they could stand on the lake bottom and go up underneath the boat.
“A passerby had a scuba diving mask, and he gave it to one of the guys diving, and I gave him a flashlight, and he probably dove a dozen times under the boat before he came out with the little girl wearing her pink lifejacket,” Luke said.
The small child wasn’t breathing, so her rescuers laid her on top of the overturned pontoon right there in the water, and a nurse, an off-duty firefighter from another town, and one of the game wardens began lifesaving measures until the ambulance arrived, which Luke said took about 12 minutes.
Putnam County EMS took her to Putnam General Hospital, and from there, Milledgeville Air Evac Lifeteam flew her to Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, where she was admitted into the pediatric intensive care unit.
The rescue boaters took some of the other passengers who had fallen overboard to Fish Tale Marina, where they were treated by Putnam County EMS or taken to the hospital for minor injuries, Sheriff Howard Sills said.
How the boat capsized
Luke said the tritoon was not a rental boat but was registered to the Buckhead man who was driving it at the time it flipped over. The number of people on board was well under the boat’s capacity rating of 16.
The driver was tested by law enforcement and wasn’t driving impaired; he wasn’t speeding, and neither were any of the other boats.
“It was between 800 to 1,000 boats leaving, but everyone was acting dutifully, driving beside each other, everything was going smoothly,” Luke noted. “There was no negligence on anybody’s part.”
All of the boats were heading north as they left the fireworks show.
Luke said the point on the lake there, near Barrington Hall Drive, always has rough waters.
When the tritoon and other boats made the right turn around the point, a wave came over the front of the tritoon.
Like most pontoons, the tritoon featured cushioned seating around the front of the boat, and all 11 passengers were seated on those cushions.
“They just weren’t proportioned out the way they should’ve been,” Luke said, noting Tilly was sitting on an adult’s lap.
When the wave hit the front of the boat, everyone moved to the back port (left) side.
“So, the weight of the water on board from the wave, along with all of them, caused the tritoon to just roll over,” he said. “Even though it’s a tritoon, it’s still heavier on the top than on the bottom because those aluminum cylinders have nothing but air in them. And it’s not like it’s got a deep keel underneath it. So, it just rolled over. I’ve seen it happen before two times this time; I’ve seen it before.”
The tritoon was taken to the Putnam County Sheriff’s Office. The Georgia DNR will send a Critical Incident Response Team (CIRT) to retrieve the item from the lake and reenact what happened. CIRT investigates all fatal and serious injury boating incidents statewide, according to the agency’s website.
The end — and beginning — of the voyage
Harrison said he received a phone call from the physician at Children’s Healthcare saying little Tilly had died at 10:17 p.m. on Sunday.
A GoFundMe page has been set up to assist Tilly’s mother, Tiffany, “navigate both the overwhelming grief and unexpected financial burdens … (of) funeral expenses, time off work to grieve, therapy and counseling, and any other unforeseen costs that arise during this heartbreaking time,” Davinah Jenkins says on the page.