Was the Channel Marker Even Visible? Defense Shifts Fatal Boat Crash Away From Alcohol — and Onto a Light in the Dark
Stephen Schneider, 64, faces two counts of reckless vessel homicide, plus charges of operating a vessel under the influence and reckless operation, after a July 19, 2026 collision on Barnegat Bay. Shortly after 9 p.m., his Tidewater Custom 280 struck Intracoastal Waterway channel marker No. 39 near Berkeley Township, New Jersey. His grandchildren, Mya Bella Golabek, 9, and Sigmund Paul Golabek, 7, were seated in the bow wearing life jackets. The impact threw both children into the water. They were found face-down and unresponsive. Schneider and his wife Laurie pulled them aboard and began CPR. The children were taken to a hospital in Toms River and did not survive.
The family had eaten dinner at MJ’s Restaurant in Bayville. The children had arrived with their parents on a separate boat. After the meal they asked to ride back to their grandparents’ home. Schneider later told investigators he was traveling about 20 mph and saw the marker only at the last second, striking it with the starboard bow. He said the boat’s radar and a low-light night navigation camera were on.
Prosecutors say a blood test showed a blood-alcohol concentration of approximately 0.16 percent, twice New Jersey’s 0.08 legal limit for operating a vessel. Schneider told police he drank two Guinness beers and one Miller Lite over about two hours. Toxicology conclusions stated that his alertness, judgment, perception, response time, and coordination were markedly impaired by alcohol.
The defense has moved the fight onto a different question: whether marker 39 was bright enough to be seen in the dark. Court records describe the aid as a single-stanchion illuminated navigational marker. Local officials and investigators have said the lights were functioning that night. Schneider’s lawyer has said the defense still needs to determine whether the buoy was lit or unlit at the moment of impact and intends to use its own experts, including on the blood-alcohol result.
That technical dispute matters because night navigation on Barnegat Bay depends on a chain of visual cues: range of the light, background glare from shore, weather, sea state, and the operator’s ability to process what the instruments show. A marker that is “illuminated” on paper can still be hard to pick out if intensity, flash pattern, or line of sight is reduced. Conversely, a working light that an impaired operator notices too late does not erase the alcohol evidence. Both tracks will be tested.
Schneider, a retired worker from Bayville, was released on conditions after a mid-August hearing. He is barred from operating a boat or motor vehicle pending assessment. The children’s parents supported release in letters to the court. He is due back in court on September 15. If convicted of the homicide counts, he faces a substantial prison term under New Jersey law.
The case now sits at the intersection of impairment and infrastructure. One side will argue that twice the legal limit and a last-second sighting of a known channel aid explain the crash. The other will argue that if experts can show the marker’s light was inadequate or failed that night, the story of how two children died in life jackets on a short ride home is not finished. The buoy, not only the blood test, has become the center of the legal fight.
