A jury was shown a heart-wrenching video of a 17-year-old boat crash victim singing and dancing with friends before she died — as closing arguments in Florida real estate developer George Pino’s trial kicked off Monday.

Pino, 55, was hosting 12 teen girls for his daughter’s 18th birthday on his 29-foot boat when they crashed in Biscayne Bay on Sept. 4, 2022.

Pino allegedly drove the boat at 47 miles per hour before hitting a channel marker in the crash that killed 17-year-old passenger Luciana “Lucy” Fernandez, according to cops and prosecutor Laura Adams.

Earlier that day, Fernandez and her friends, clad in swimsuits and sunglasses, were seen jumping around and belting the lyrics to Billy Joel’s “Uptown Girl” in a video taken on the boat. 

The father and well-known Doral real estate broker is facing second-degree manslaughter and vessel homicide charges over his alleged involvement in the crash that killed Fernandez and left Katerina Puig, who was then 18, with permanent and debilitating injuries. He has pleaded not guilty.

Adams told the jury Pino was more concerned with being “the cool dad” than with the safety of the passengers, which included his wife, Cecilia. 

“He was going full throttle, full throttle with all these teenagers on board that had been consuming alcohol – as fast as he can through a narrow channel,” Adams said during the closing argument. 

Furthermore, “he decides to travel down the wrong side of the channel,” the prosecutor said. 

“You sure as heck weren’t watching out for that neon green channel marker that you knew was there and, because of that inattention, his boat wound up upside down under the water,” Adams said of Pino, who had allegedly captained the same route many times before that fateful day. 

The force of the crash tore a large hole in the side of the boat and threw all of the passengers into the water. Eleven people were injured and six were taken to the hospital.

Fernandez, who was reportedly trapped underneath the boat after it crashed, died from drowning-related injuries in the hospital about 12 hours later.

“Because he was operating in such complete disregard for the kids that were on his boat, Lucy winds up like this in the hospital,” the attorney continued, and flashed a chilling photo of Fernandez in a hospital bed.

“No one and nothing is responsible for the death of Lucy Fernandez except for that man sitting right there – he is the reason why she is dead,” Adams continued, pointing to Pino, who was seen inaudibly murmuring to himself, taking notes and staring blankly ahead throughout the closing statement.

Adams claimed that Pino — who was not sobriety tested immediately after the incident — may have lied about having “two beers” while on the boat as he told investigators. 

“I’m going to submit to you that maybe the evidence suggests that just as he wasn’t exactly truthful about how the crash happened, maybe he also wasn’t so truthful about how much alcohol he had consumed,” the prosecutor said.

A day after the crash, investigators found a total of 61 alcohol bottles and cans on the boat, the Miami Herald reported in July 2025.

Pino “wasn’t thinking about the well-being of his passengers – he wasn’t thinking about the well-being even of his own wife and daughter,” Adams slammed. 

“He was too wrapped up in trying to be the cool dad on the fast boat.”

Pino’s defense attorney, Howard Srebnick, argued that the state had failed to prove that his client had acted in a reckless, flagrant or gross nature while driving the boat – instead, “he may have committed human error.”

“He may not have looked up in time to see the marker…that does not make him a criminal,” Srebnick said.

The defense attorney also insisted that his client wasn’t drunk at the time of the crash.

“Not a single person has said that George Pino was in any way impaired by alcohol,” Srebnick said, adding that Pino lost consciousness after the wreck, when he “hit his face on the floor of the boat and then the back of his head hit the boat.”

The resulting “traumatic brain injury” and “amnesia” is why Pino mixed up details of the crash during a subsequent interview with detectives – not because he was lying, per the state’s argument, the attorney continued.

Srebnick also slammed Adams’ logic that Pino was trying to be a “cool dad” by driving the boat fast.

“Every single witness who testified that was on the boat…felt the speed was safe. They’d been on his boat before, it felt no different, nothing unusual about the way Mr. Pino was operating this vessel.

“He wasn’t drag racing, he wasn’t doing donuts in the water…he was not trying to be the ‘cool dad.’ I don’t know where that came from,” he said. “No one on the boat asked George Pino to slow down.”

The vessel “was traveling on straight lines at speeds that [the boat] is designed to travel at, in a zone where there is no speed limit,” Srebnick said.

“If George had not hit the piling, nothing bad would have happened. The conditions were ideal…there was no oncoming boat traffic – it was a wide open bay. The speed had nothing to do with the injuries…with the crash,” he insisted.