Ferry pilot pleads guilty

NEW YORK - A Staten Island ferry pilot pleaded guilty to manslaughter charges Wednesday in a crash that killed 11 commuters in October, acknowledging he passed out after arriving at work with medication in his system.

Richard Smith made his plea hours before authorities released an indictment charging New York's director of ferries with manslaughter for allegedly running a system so slipshod that it was "a tragedy waiting to happen," prosecutors said.

The plea and indictments followed a 10-month investigation in the case. The Oct. 15 crash occurred when the Andrew J. Barberi ferry drifted off course and slammed into a concrete pier.

Prosecutors said ferry director Patrick Ryan neglected long-established safety practices, including the requirement that a ship's captain and assistant captain share the wheelhouse during docking. The two-pilot requirement was put in place in 1958 to prevent an accident if one person was incapacitated, prosecutors said.

But Ryan never told new pilots about the rule or enforced it, prosecutors said. They said his mismanagement was so bad that the ferry system, which shuttles about 70,000 people daily between Staten Island and Manhattan, had no set of written standard operating procedures at the time of the crash.

Ryan's attorney said he had no immediate comment.

Smith, 55, could be sentenced to more than three years in prison under federal guidelines.

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