Richard Stevenson was ordered held in custody after prosecutors said he was drunk when his 31-foot pontoon boat slammed into a smaller vessel on the Fox River, killing a 48-year-old woman and injuring her husband. He has not entered a plea, and the allegations against him have not been proven in court.
The case moved forward in court on Monday, making Stevenson the focus of a fatal crash that investigators say began in a no-wake zone and ended with a wrecked boat near the shoreline. Prosecutors charged him with reckless homicide and two counts of aggravated DUI after the collision on July 25, and a judge kept him jailed ahead of trial.
Illinois Conservation Police were called to the Fox River south of McHenry Dam at about 2:30 p.m. after the collision between two boats. Officers found heavy damage to a 20-foot Crownline and Stevenson beside his pontoon near a line of trees. He was taken to Northwestern Hospital in McHenry, where testing allegedly put his blood alcohol level at about.200, more than twice the legal limit.
The speed allegation gives the crash its force. Prosecutors said Stevenson was traveling at roughly 80 miles per hour in a place where boats are supposed to move slowly, and surveillance footage reportedly captured him speeding across the Fox River and the adjoining Chain O'Lakes in the hours before the crash. That still leaves one basic question hanging over the case: why he was moving that fast at all, while witnesses described a day of heavy drinking.
Deputy Chief Brian Miller told the detention hearing that Stevenson was “a ticking time-bomb,” and that the bomb went off on Saturday on the Fox River. The judge's custody order means Stevenson will remain locked up while the case moves toward his next court date on August 5. The state will have to prove not just that the crash was deadly, but that Stevenson’s conduct crossed the line from recklessness into criminal responsibility.
