Robert Post's Widow: Toughen NJ's 'Leaving the Scene' Law for Boat Accidents

"I think it's sort of reopened the whole grieving process again," said Bonnie Post, describing the feeling of Anthony DiGilio being found not guilty of vehicular homicide in the boating accident that killed her husband, Robert.

"It minimized the death of my husband," said Post, a pediatric nurse from Essex Fells and a summer resident of Point Pleasant Borough.

The verdict in the DiGilio case, which stemmed from an Aug. 3, 2008 accident in the Metedeconk River in Brick, came more than four years later on April 22. A week after the verdict, Bonnie Post is reeling from what she sees not only as an injustice to her family, but a wider hole in New Jersey's boating laws.

DiGilio, then 29, did not stop after hitting the 17-foot Boston Whaler which Robert Post, 49, was operating. DiGilio would come forward hours later, represented by an attorney, to notify authorities that he may have hit something in the area where the accident occurred. His 27-foot Imperial performance boat, by then, had been taken out of the water.

DiGilio was never charged with leaving the scene of an accident, rather, he was charged with the more serious offense of vehicular homicide.

In some states, leaving the scene of a fatal boating accident could earn a person years behind bars if convicted, but in New Jersey the state's mandatory accident reporting statute does not prescribe any specific fines or penalties, reverting to the default penalty of a fine of just $25 for violating a general boating statute.

Leaving the scene of a fatal accident in an automobile, however, is considered a third degree felony punishable by three to five years in prison.

The "penalty gap" between roadway and waterway violations of the same offense prompted state Sen. James Holzapfel (R-Ocean) to propose a bill (S-1478) that would make the punishment for leaving the scene of boating accidents essentially the same as automobile accidents, including the third degree charge in the case of a fatal accident.

Holzapfel introduced that bill several years ago when he was still a member of the General Assembly – it never was posted for so much as a committee vote – and as a senator he has reintroduced the bill each session, with his fellow 10th district legislators in the Assembly sponsoring a version in that body.

"It really is a hole in the system, not to have something with teeth in it," said Holzapfel, who is a former Ocean County prosecutor.

The current law "is not reflective as to how the waterways have been the last 25 years – high speed vessels, high traffic on the water," he said.

Over the past week since the DiGilio verdict came in, Holzapfel's office has received multiple calls asking for the law to be strengthened, and he has forwarded those messages plus news clippings of the DiGilio verdict to state Sen. Donald Norcross (D-Camden, Gloucester), who chairs the senate's Law and Public Safety Committee.

"As a result of that trial, we have generated a letter to the committee asking him to post this motion ASAP," he said.

Dave Patnaude, president of the New Jersey Performance Power Boat Club, said he would also support strengthening the law against leaving the scene of boating accidents.

"By land or by sea, there's no excuse for leaving the scene of an accident," said Patnaude, whose group in the past has argued against boating restrictions such as numerical speed limits on Barnegat Bay. "It's something we'd be in support of."

Friends of the Post family have now started an online petition to strengthen the accident reporting law in New Jersey.

But for Bonnie Post, every day remains a struggle just to get back to where she was the day before the verdict was read.

"This is such a brutal lesson for my children, to not have justice be done," said Post, whose sons are now ages 17 and 24. "As frustrated as I am at this outcome and as angry as I am, I have to remember that this was such an uphill battle from the beginning. My goal was just to have [DiGilio] sit through a trial and think about what he did."