Boston Man Faces Charges In Boat Crash Death Of 24-Year-Old Andover Woman

ANDOVER, MA — A 40-year-old Boston man was in Suffolk Superior Court on Wednesday to face charges that he spent a night drinking in the Seaport before inviting three women he just met onto a boat he did not own, and crashed it into a pier at Logan Airport, causing the death of 24-year-old Elizabeth Dankert of Andover, and seriously injuring her two friends and himself in May.

Suffolk County District Attorney Kevin Hayden said Lawrence Shieh, 40, of Boston, drank with friends at multiple Seaport locations, including the ReelHouse, before meeting the girls after dark and inviting them to go boating in Boston Harbor.

• Boston Boat Crash Victim Elizabeth Dankert Remembered As "Terrific Young Woman"

"Mr. Shieh did not own a boat," Hayden said during a news conference, "but regularly used one as a member of the Freedom Boat Beach Club."

Hayden said that while boat club regulations "strictly forbid" night use of the boat, which had no lights for navigation, he took it out into the harbor with the women aboard. He said cell phone video from the trip showed Shieh was "inattentive at the wheel," "engaging with the women," and disengaged from the boat's steering system.

Hayden said recovered data from the boat showed it was traveling at a "dangerously excessive speed" of 36 miles per hour when it engaged in a hairpin turn and headed toward a restricted area near Logan Airport, where it crashed nearly head-first into the pier.

"What transpired after the crash can only be described as a tremendously heroic rescue operation," Hayden said.

He said first responders "navigated down a slope of slippery, seaweed-covered jetty boulders" to reach the victims still on the boat.

"Miss Dankert suffered a devastating head injury," Hayden said. "Shieh and her two friends suffered non-life-threatening injuries. Tragically, Miss Dankert, known to her friends and family as Lizzy, succumbed to her injuries and was pronounced deceased at Massachusetts General Hospital."

Hayden said Shieh's blood alcohol level was .20 — more than twice the legal limit for operating a vehicle.

He said some of the evidence was found on Dankert's cell phone, which a dive investigation team fished from the ocean floor a week later.

"We are here today, and Miss Dankert is not here today, because of Lawrence Shieh's dangerous and ultimately deadly behavior," Hayden said. "He was intoxicated. He unlawfully took a boat out into Boston Harbor in the dead of night.

"He drove that boat at a reckless speed in a restricted area of Boston Harbor. He did this with three young women aboard, placing their lives in imminent danger. His reckless actions that night ended one life and dramatically changed three others, including his own."

Shieh was released on $25,000 cash bail with orders to have no contact with witnesses, the boat club, and Seaport businesses he was at the night of the crash, and was prohibited from boating and drinking alcohol for the duration of the case.

He is due back in court on Oct. 8.