As Regina Brinson and her uncle, Isaiah Thomas, helped 93-year-old Carlotta McIntosh across the packed gangway connecting the Sapelo Island ferry to land on Saturday, she heard a crack.
In a moment, the structure collapsed from under Brinson as she and others dropped into the water. She remembers telling Thomas to grab her hand as the river’s current swept them away, she said at a news conference in Jacksonville, Florida, on Tuesday. But her uncle also grabbed her shirt, pulling her under the water. To survive, Brinson pried his hand off — finger by finger.
“I kept saying to myself, ‘Oh my God, I’m going to die. I’m going to die,’” Brinson said.
She eventually made her way to the shore and began calling out to find her uncle. But Thomas and McIntosh ultimately perished.
McIntosh and Thomas, who was 79, were two of seven people who died when the gangway collapsed during the annual Sapelo Cultural Day celebration at the Marsh Landing Dock. The other victims were: Atlantans William Johnson Jr., 73, and Queen Welch, 76; Charles L. Houston, 77, of Darien; and Jacqueline Crews Carter, 75, and Cynthia Gibbs, 74, both from Jacksonville.
In the days since, grieving family members, friends and colleagues have spoken about those who died in the tragedy.
Ebony Davis, McIntosh’s granddaughter, attended a Tuesday news conference held by civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump, who is representing many of the families.
Davis said her grandmother died doing what she loved: living life to the fullest.
“She was 93 years young. There was no old in her. She was vibrant. She was spunky. She was feisty. She was my world,” she said.
Gibbs was remembered as a person who liked to help the elderly and people with disabilities.
Impact Church, which she attended, said in a statement that she was always willing to lend a hand, was quick with a funny quip and full of energy.
Gibbs worked for many years at the Jacksonville Urban League in human resources, eventually rising to assistant HR director, said the organization’s president, Richard Danford.
“She was a gregarious kind of person and very inquisitive,” he said. “Oftentimes, she had an answer for everything, and that’s good.”
Danford said Gibbs worked with the Head Start program that, at the time, was overseen by the Urban League.
She was also a friend outside of work. She would sometimes pitch in and look after Danford’s son. Danford and Gibbs’ late husband used to go fishing. While they could never get her out on the boat, he said, “she had no problem cleaning and frying the fish.”
Gibbs viewed her time at the Urban League as more of a job than a mission, said Jacksonville City Councilman Rahman Johnson, who also worked for the organization.
”She was never without a smile,” said Johnson, who also had known McIntosh for years.
McIntosh, he said, was a retired teacher.
”She was looking forward to her 100th birthday,” he said. “There’s a video where she was dancing and doing the electric slide for her 90th birthday. She was full of life. No walker. No cane. None of that.”
”'Hello, how are you my darling,’” he said, imitating her frequent greeting. “She would always push cultural understanding, so it’s no surprise that she would be at Sapelo Island. She was always one to urge younger people to maintain cultural traditions.”
Saturday’s event was a celebration of the island’s Gullah Geechee community, descendants of the enslaved people who inhabited the island generations ago.
For many residents of Jacksonville, the annual cultural festival on Sapelo Island is an important way to connect to history, said Saundra Morene, president of the Jacksonville Gullah Geechee Nation Community Development Corp.
Many residents of the Jacksonville metro area share Gullah Geechee heritage, including Morene. She thinks at least three buses traveled to Sapelo from Jacksonville, which has its own festival called October Gullah Fest.
Morene attended the cultural day on Sapelo Island as a child and as an adult. She’s also led tours there. Her maternal grandmother was Gullah and talked to her in her native tongue.
“This is the kind of cultural day that you can’t re-create. When you go to the island, you go back in time, the ambience and the connections you make when you go. … It’s like a pilgrimage. It’s especially important for people who are 70, 80, 90 years old because there’s little real-time information that connects them to their heritage.”
Crump said the history behind the celebration only underscores the importance of securing justice for the survivors of the collapse. At the Tuesday news conference, he called on the federal government to open an inquiry.
“They were there for a celebration that turned into tragedy because of malfeasance,” Crump said.
Georgia Department of Natural Resources Commissioner Walter Rabon said authorities are investigating the “catastrophic failure” of the gangway, which is used to bring people who travel to otherwise inaccessible Sapelo Island to and from shore. The agency operates the ferry and gangway.
The structure was installed in November 2021 as part of a larger landing rehabilitation project and undergoes “almost daily” visual inspections by DNR staff, although those probes don’t involve structural reviews of the underside of the platform, Rabon said at a Saturday news conference.
Credit: TNS
Credit: TNS
The DNR confirmed in a separate statement that the gangway was inspected in December 2023, by Crescent Equipment Company.
Crump said his firm would get justice for the victims he refers to as the “Sapelo Seven.”
“They did not die of natural causes,” Crump said. “They died of negligence.”
