Eight people who drowned when their boat capsized in a storm last June on Lake Tahoe declined requests from one of the passengers, a nurse, to put on life jackets, did not call 911 and tried to bail out water with a beverage cooler as heavy waves increasingly crashed overboard, according to a police report released Wednesday.
Only two people survived, including Amy Friduss, a nurse from Rochester, New York, who was wearing a life jacket and who described the final minutes to police on the shoreline afterward.
Friduss told El Dorado County Sheriff’s deputy Mathew Grey that without warning the weather turned stormy, there were large waves and high winds, and she tried to help.
“The boat started to take on water from the waves and the engine stopped,” his report stated. “She told everyone on board to keep bailing out water, but there was ‘no sense of urgency.’ The occupants of the boat began to argue and the boat turned sideways to the waves and wind. They began to take on even more water and things got worse. All of the sudden the boat flipped.”
The police reports were released to the Bay Area News Group on Wednesday under a public records act request.
The accident occurred June 21, after Joshua Pickles, 37, an executive at DoorDash in San Francisco, took his parents, Terry Pickles and Paula Bozinovich, of Redwood City, along with seven other friends and family members out on Lake Tahoe in a 28-foot Chris-Craft boat to celebrate Bozinovich’s 71st birthday.
They left from Tahoe City in the boat, named Over the Moon, which Pickles and his father had purchased the year before and only taken on the water twice before. The group reached Emerald Bay on Lake Tahoe’s southwestern edge. The morning’s calm weather was broken by a sudden, rough storm that roared in with strong winds, snow and waves up to eight feet high.
The group left the relative shelter of Emerald Bay after a discussion among the passengers and tried to make it back to a marina, the police report said. Numerous more experienced boaters stayed in Emerald Bay and other sheltered areas along the Tahoe shoreline when the freak storm made conditions dangerous that day.
As the boat headed back north into the open waters, waves began breaking over the side, and it stalled about 50 to 100 yards off D.L. Bliss State Park, overturning when it was hit by a particularly large wave. The water temperature was 54 degrees, El Dorado County deputies said.
A hiker in the area called 911. Police, firefighters and state park rangers responded and began pulling the bodies of the victims out of the water.
Only two of the passengers survived, Friduss, 40, and her mother, Julie Lindsay, 65, of Springwater, New York. Both were wearing life jackets.
None of the others on the boat, according to the a preliminary NTSB report released last year and Wednesday’s report, were wearing life jackets.
In addition to Bozinovich, and Josh and Terry Pickles, the other victims who drowned were Peter Bayes, 72, from Lincoln, Calif.; Timothy O’Leary, 71, from Auburn, Calif.; Stephen Lindsay, 63, from Springwater, New York; and Theresa Giullari, 66, and James Guck, 69, both from Honeoye, New York.
The accident is believed to be the deadliest boating incident in California since 2019, when the Conception, a 75-foot dive boat, caught fire in the middle of the night and sank near Santa Cruz Island, off Ventura County, killing 34 of the 39 people aboard.
Wednesday’s report said a salvage company recovered the boat which was examined by the Coast Guard and NTSB investigators. There was no evidence of a hull leak or grounding. The life jackets were still in storage compartments.
Doug Powell, the former commander of the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Department Marine Unit, and a boating safety expert, said Wednesday that the group made two tragic mistakes: not staying in the relatively safe waters of Emerald Bay and not putting on life jackets.
He cited several other recent high-profile boating accidents in California, including an incident in November 2024 when a 21-foot boat with six people aboard capsized off Bodega Bay while fishing. An 11-year-old boy, who was wearing a life jacket and used a cooler to float, was the only person to survive.
“So many of these deaths are preventable,” Powell said. “Have your lifejackets on board ready to use. Test them before you go out. If you are unsure, hire a captain.”
California state law requires children under age 13 to wear a U.S. Coast Guard-approved life jacket while on any moving recreational vessel. That includes boats, kayaks, canoes and personal watercraft. Adults are generally not required to wear life jackets but the boat operator must have enough on board for each person.
Life jackets are particularly important because storms can quickly and unexpectedly whip up, he added.
“The weather might be great when you go out,” he said. “Weather changes all the time, especially at Lake Tahoe. Be prepared.”
Joshua Pickles was operating the boat on the day of the accident, Wednesday’s report said.
Pickles and his father were the joint owners of the vessel, which could seat 12 and was valued at $393,000, according to authorities. Both had passed a California boating safety course, required of all boat operators starting this Jan. 1, according to records from the California Division of Boating and Waterways.
Sam Singer, a spokesman for the family, said the surviving members, who include Pickles’ widow, Jordan Sugar-Carlsgaard, and his 1-year-old daughter, would have no comment.
“They are trying to go about their lives after this terrible tragedy,” Singer said.
The police report Wednesday said that engine codes obtained from the electronic system of the vessel showed that at 2:46 p.m. a “high water alarm” set off, and two minutes later, two error codes of “blown fuse” occurred.
“As the boat took on water, some of the passengers attempted to bail the water out of the boat with a Yeti cooler,” the police report said. “The boat listed to starboard, submerging the starboard aft (right rear) corner of the vessel. At one point, a particularly large wave overtook the boat, causing a large amount of water to enter the boat.”
Friduss put on a life jacket and urged others to do the same.
“No one else immediately donned their PFD (life jacket),” the report said. “Shortly after, the boat rolled over to the starboard side and the occupants were ejected into the water. Occupant Friduss recalled that it started snowing after the boat rolled over while the people were in the water. No distress calls were made from the boat.”
The report noted that Pickles picked up two gallons of a popular rum drink called “Wet Woody” from a restaurant before heading out on the water that morning.
Six of the eight people who died had been drinking, autopsy reports released last August showed.
The blood alcohol concentration of the six victims ranged from a low of 0.013% to a high of 0.068%, according to the reports from the El Dorado County Coroner’s Office. California’s legal limit for operating a recreational boat or a passenger motor vehicle is 0.080% — a threshold all of the victims were below.
“Toxicology tests for alcohol and other drugs were conducted by the El Dorado County Coroner’s Office and no evidence of any alcoholic beverage or drugs were found to be a factor in this incident,” Wednesday’s police report said.