Married Couple Dies After Boat Runs Aground and ‘Cracked in Half’ Upon Crash: Officials

A day on the water turned into a tragedy after a speeding boat ran aground and split into two, killing the married couple aboard the vessel.

Witnesses told local news station WGN they saw a motorboat speeding up and down Fox River in McHenry, Illinois – around 60 miles northwest of Chicago – prior to the fatal crash on Saturday evening.

Witnesses said the boat was “weaving and cutting back and forth” before it ultimately hit the shoreline and traveled 73 feet on land, the Belleville News-Democrat reported.

The impact caused the boat to split in half when it finally came to rest, officials told the Lake McHenry Scanner. A house on the property sustained minor damage from the impact, according to officials. Nearby resident Connor Lively told WGN he heard a commotion at around 5:45 and saw the boat upside down on land.

“Walked out, saw a big boat in my neighbor’s yard, flipped over, cracked in half,” Lively said.

“There’s a ramp of mud going right into the yard. I don’t know how that happened,” he added.

He told the news station he instructed someone to call 911 and attempted to move the boat of a man and woman trapped in the wreckage.

Lively and other bystanders were able to push part of the boat off of one victim, 62-year-old Timothy Mertins, but his wife, a 61-year-old woman, was “entirely under the boat,” Lively told the Lake McHenry Scanner. The woman was pronounced dead at the scene, and the man died a few hours later at the hospital, officials told WGN.