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Bail set at $75,000 for lawyer charged in connection with woman losing her arm in Boston Harbor
By adamg on Mon, 06/01/2015 - 12:23pm
UPDATE: Bail reduced to $10,000.
Benjamin Urbelis, 33, of Charlestown, had bail set at $75,000 at his arraignment today on charges of operating a boat while under the influence causing serious bodily injury, negligent operation of a boat and operating a motorboat without a legally required identification number, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office reports.
Urbelis was arrested after an incident Saturday night in which a woman jumped into the water, then had her arm sliced off by the Naut Guilty's propeller.
Urbelis was also ordered to give up his passport, the DA's office reports.
If convicted, he faces between six months and ten years behind bars of the most serious charge - the same as for somebody convicted of OUI causing serious injury in a car - according to the DA's office, which provided this account:
Based on witness interviews and the victim's injuries, investigators believe that Urbelis was operating the boat and had control of its navigation and use at the time the victim was injured. At some point while he was attempting to anchor, the evidence suggests, she and other passengers jumped into the water to retrieve a pad that had blown off the front of the boat. The young woman had trouble re-boarding, however, and was grievously injured by the active propeller.
About four hours after the initial distress call, [Assistant District Attorney Nicole] Rimar said in court, Urbelis agreed to take a Breathalyzer test and blew a .09, over the legal limit for operating a vehicle or boat.
Urbelis, who represents people charged with OUI and who boasts on his Web site that "the most telling mark of Benjamin's reputation is that many attorneys retain his services when they find themselves facing criminal charges," was represented by Daniel O'Malley of Quincy.
Innocent, etc.
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Comments
Ooof....
His lawyer was also a judge until 2004: http://www.omalleylawfirm.com/daniel-w-omalley.html
Will be interesting to see if/how he gets out of this one.
Gonna cost him ...
a lot of money. That poor young woman should sue the shorts off him for not shutting off the engine.
The court really sticking it to him, not letting him have a change of clothes since Saturday night and making it like he is a flight risk with $75k bail and taking his passport. He will have to get out of his part bar ownership if he loses, and for money if he wins. Lesson: OUI is expensive.
Oh, those under aged kids? Must have been the younger siblings and cousins of the 30-something dudes there. For sure. None possibly from a club, backpage, or anything else the DA could find fishy! Club promoter/bar owner/OUI lawyers are not like that!
is he a Flight Risk?
...more like a boating endangerment
Who quits that job?
Being a MA judge is like going to heaven without dying. Has to be more to his story.
Judges don't make that much.
It's a lot less work for the money, but it isn't always the greatest job in the world.
Plus he's retired, so he probably gets a full pension in addition to the salary he gets now, so there's your real answer.
Mr. Urbelis might
want to consider changing the name of his boat.
S.S. Schadenfreude?
Or, maybe, "Karma's Female Dog"
The irony...
The irony...
Drunk boating
is rampant. A well known developer in Quincy killed a guy with his boat propeller a few years back and he was also OUI and mysteriously nothing ever happened to him.
Yeah
other than Mr. O'Connell's manslaughter trial.
Cocky SOB
If he's guilty, he deserves to be punished.
Interesting age range on that boat
I guess this guy knows how to party? Hmm...
His FB page (which is
His FB page (which is surprisingly still up) also indicates he is a partner at the Julep Bar downtown, which has had some issues with underage drinking recently.
However, it could also be family/relatives.
The Yelp reviews
The Yelp reviews for the Julep Bar make it seem like such a classy place.
Throw in a few banyard animals..
.and it's Neo-Caligula, Masshole stylee with drunks.
The fact that an OUI defense
The fact that an OUI defense lawyer was OUI speaks to the expectations of the (legal) consequences of OUI: nothing.
Not a very good OUI lawyer
Rule #1 of OUI in Mass is: NEVER BLOW THE FRICKING BREATHALYZER!!!
sure you might get hit with automatic license suspension from the RMV (that you can get a hardship exception on) but the criminal charges will never stick.
Maybe
He was too impaired to remember that important fact. Or he realized he was in deep doo doo and panicked. Either way, not a bright guy on so many levels ....sounds like hubris played a role
Maybe
He was too impaired to remember that important fact. Or he realized he was in deep doo doo and panicked. Either way, not a bright guy on so many levels ....sounds like hubris played a role
Warrant for a blood test?
They may have convinced him that they had or were going to get a warrant for a blood test, and he did the breathalyzer as it may be less accurate?
No they wouldn't get a warrant for that.
I bet he actually thought he could get under the .08. I mean he was close, so he he may have known exactly how much he had to drink and thought that would be under the limit?
Also, good OUIL lawyers can get these breath tests thrown out on technicalities as well. Probably a 50% of that.
And I don't know the boat laws that well, but the injuries to that woman and the millions of dollars in a pontential civil suit is what he is probably more worries about.
It does make me wonder
How drunk he was four hours previous.
He's most likely going to be
He's most likely going to be able to beat the OUI charge. The civil lawsuit from the injured girl is what I'd be more worried about...
Face it, Naut Guilty, that's how we stay filthy.
Hopefully this guy doesn't have someone's daughter tied up in a Charlestown basement.
(with apologies to the late Christopher Wallace)
You're words just hypnotize
You're words just hypnotize me!
Wouldn't be surprised if he
Wouldn't be surprised if he gets away with this. As an OUI lawyer himself, he knew not to submit to a breathalyzer or to give a blood sample. He then knows enough to hire not the lawyer with a fancy downtown office who went to Harvard, but the one who used to be a local judge.
At the very least there should be a very substantial civil settlement though. Maiming someone is probably worse than killing them in that regard.
He waited 4 hours
then blew a 0.09%. Oops. Stated during arraignment that he refused for 4 hours then submitted to the Breathalyzer.
Makes you wonder if he did a
Makes you wonder if he did a mental calculation of how long it would take to get under the limit, and then rolled the dice. Forgot about that Jello shot he had with the girls though.
Interesting Facebook photo
Guess he hasn't had a chance to take it down yet. Cover photo is a shot of him holding a blue Solo cup on the bow of his boat.
He must've made bail...
The picture and all of his formerly public posts are now gone.
URBELLIS
Shameless self promoter
Why bail and passport?
Wouldn't they expect a lawyer to show up to court regardless of bail?
I assume that a lawyer can't flee and get a lawyer job elsewhere, with unresolved charges.
This is awful
Someone lost an arm in an incident. Secondarily, people on the boat (including a kid) were probably traumatized.
What public good is served by some of these comments making cynical jokes, and jumping to conclusions about fault?
As the newspapers sink further, maybe UH can set an example for respectability.
Um, well the "fault" part
is pretty clear, anon. And, yes, it is a very sad that a young lady lost a lower part of an arm but most of the comments here seem to be pretty reasonable. Or, perhaps, you are a friend of the attorney in question?
Driver of boat
she did not just lose the lower part of her arm, dear. She lost her whole arm, plus her face was slashed and her torso was badly slashed.
Fault....
So much for those pesky eye-witnesses huh?
A Charlestown lawyer and nightclub promoter who prosecutors say was drunk at the helm when his boat’s propeller sliced through the arm of a 19-year-old was swimming far from the scene when the injury occurred, according to two passengers who were on the boat.
“The Boat’s engine was off and the Boat was anchored for some time,” the witnesses wrote in the statement. “A few of us including Ben went into the water for a while and ended up drifting quite a ways from the Boat. While Ben and I were in the water far away, we noticed that the Boat was turned ‘ON’ and being driven.”
The statement did not say who was at the wheel when the injury occurred.
The owner of the boat is still responsible.
If the idiot failed to secure his bucket from random use by other people on the overcrowded mess he is still responsible for that lapse.
These dodges are like dog-ate-my-homework pleas for a very serious and wretched mess where the victim gets shunted aside by this amateurish excuse making.
The answer, from Family Circus
Nobody.
And that's _professional_ excuse-making, thenkyouverymuch.
Key OUIL on a Vessel terms.......
Ch. 90B s.1
So I'm going to say this means he didn't have to even be "operating the boat". He owns it. He was operating it. He is in charge of it.
Confused
He turned the boat off and threw the anchor....I don't know all the rules of the ocean but I believe the owner of a boat is allowed to go swimming if the boat is turned off and anchor has been thrown, right?
Articles said that they picked the guy and one of his friends up nowhere near his boat....and while he was away from it, someone turned it on/the accident happened.
I'm going to take a wild guess and say he has nothing to do with what happened......we'll see how it goes I guess.
Devils Advocate....
Horrible accident, but I wonder what state of mind the woman who fell overboard was in at the time?
If she had no life jacket on,
If she had no life jacket on, she was probably trying to get close to the boat to have something to hang on to, and then the propeller sliced her arm off.
she didnt fall
she jumped.
and that is how he is going to get off of this
Maybe, maybe not
She was underage and there was drinking going on.
The boat was racing through the channel the wrong way before stopping.
The person in charge of the boat and the engine was drunk.
He did not make a proper distress call, and the CG had trouble finding him, as did nearby mariners.
There seem to be a whole host of recklessness issues surrounding this event that mean that he won't get off easily.
Based on witness interviews
Not to rain on youse guys' witch hunt or anything, but can someone rationally explain how his state of drunkenness contributed to this woman losing her arm, or how his lack thereof could have prevented her from stupidly jumping in the water to retrieve something and accidentally hitting the propeller? The way the accident is described above makes his drunkenness and her injury sound coincidental.
Reflexes, judgment, etc.
Having spent time operating boats, I can suggest that an impaired person might be:
The article states he was
The article states he was busy anchoring the boat when these idiots jumped off a running boat to retrieve some object. He might be the captain but he can't be doing two things at once. Everything you posted is, while interesting, only speculation, and fortunately people can't get convicted on some random Internet guy's speculation about why he's guilty.
He's responsible
If he was busy anchoring the boat, he should have left the boat in neutral. It's very common for the captain to leave the controls to do something else.
Again, he's responsible for what's going on in his boat.
Now, why he wanted to anchor the boat doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I would think you'd want to get the injured party on board and GTF outta there for help.
Yeah. Not speculation. Fact.
As the one in charge of the boat, he is held to a higher account. He is in charge of the boat and his passengers. How could he have avoided this horrific accident? Easy. Not providing alcohol to under age folks, number #1 and #2, not getting inebriated yourself, for a start.
That wasn't speculation as to what happened
If you'll reread my post, and the post to which it responds, I was not speculating as to his guilt or lack thereof, I was listing the ways in which a skipper's intoxication could have contributed to an accident.
Also, when I'm anchoring a boat, I'm right at the controls, where I could put the boat quickly into neutral if needed. Where would you be if you were busy anchoring a boat?
he's the captain and he's responsible for his passengers
100% attention to and responsibility for what's going on with the passengers on your vessel, period. Even if he was sober he would still be liable for her injury.
The charge "operating a boat
The charge "operating a boat while under the influence causing serious bodily injury" contains the key word cause. Unless there are more facts than the scant article hints at, there was no causative relationship between his drunkenness and the passenger getting injured. It doesn't say he drunkenly maneuvered the boat into her or anything like that, but she swam into the prop.
The second charge, the negligence one, might stick if they can show he "should have" been aware, like you say as the captain, of what his passengers were up to.
Wow.
Well, "cause" means "cause" meaning caused a woman to loose the lower part of her arm. He was drunk and he was behind the controls of a boat. Due to his drunken state, he did not maintain order on his vessel and he did not know enough to turn off his engine when somebody was in the water.
Enough "cause" for me.
That's an easy one
He's the captain.
Someone is in the water trying to get into the boat.
The engine should never be in gear when in that situation. Never.
Thanks for asking.
Being responsible for teenagers
What makes this all the worse is the captain being drunk and responsible for a boat load of teens. While one may need to drink to deal with teen girls, it takes all one's concentration and then some to try and manage even just one or two of them! In the end, the captain had a lot of responsibility on his hands and should not have been drinking at all, any more than if he were driving a bus full of people on the road.
No comment
I believe the expression is
gross negligence. Overloaded boat+impaired operator+providing alcohol to minors=big trouble, (even without life changing, irreversible injuries.)
you can say that again....and again
I believe the expression is
gross negligence. Overloaded boat+impaired operator+providing alcohol to minors=big trouble, (even without life changing, irreversible injuries.)
I believe the expression is
gross negligence. Overloaded boat+impaired operator+providing alcohol to minors=big trouble, (even without life changing, irreversible injuries.)
Based on witness interviews
A Charlestown lawyer and nightclub promoter who prosecutors say was drunk at the helm when his boat’s propeller sliced through the arm of a 19-year-old was swimming far from the scene when the injury occurred, according to two passengers who were on the boat.
“The Boat’s engine was off and the Boat was anchored for some time,” the witnesses wrote in the statement. “A few of us including Ben went into the water for a while and ended up drifting quite a ways from the Boat. While Ben and I were in the water far away, we noticed that the Boat was turned ‘ON’ and being driven.”
The statement did not say who was at the wheel when the injury occurred.
That certainly changes things
Definitely a new twist in this story