After reaching a deal with prosecutors, Andrew Pevler pleaded guilty Friday to a charge of misdemeanor injury to a child in the death of Emma Hooper.
The maximum penalties for misdemeanor injury are a year in jail and a $1,000 fine.
Pevler’s sentencing was postponed until Tuesday, however, to provide time for Emma’s mother, Tia Borg, to ask a judge to make Pevler spend more time in jail.
She’ll submit a written victim’s impact statement.
“She doesn’t want to testify. It’s too sensitive,” said Washington County Prosecutor Delton Walker.
Pevler, who had borrowed a boat to take his friends fishing on the Snake River in June, was indicted by a grand jury in August on one count of felony manslaughter in the death of Emma.
Emma was not wearing a Coast Guard-approved lifejacket. The flimsy vest she had on — tagged “not to be used as a flotation device” — did not keep her head out of the fast-moving water when the boat sank just seconds after the anchor was dropped. Idaho law requires children under 14 in small boats to wear a personal flotation device and makes the captain of a boat responsible for enforcing that rule.
“I believe it was totally preventable,” Walker said. “People need to know you need to be careful when you’re in a boat,” he added later.
Walker said his list of recommendations for Pevler’s sentencing could include community service, a safe-boating class, teaching kids about safe boating and a possible prohibition on operating a boat.
In exchange for the guilty plea, the prosecutor agreed not to ask for more jail time for Pevler. The Washington County Jail declined on Friday to tell the Idaho Statesman how many days Pevler spent in jail, but it appears from published reports and court records that it was less than a week.
Court records also show that Pevler’s criminal history includes a misdemeanor DUI conviction in April. In 2007, he entered a guilty plea on a charge of minor in possession of alcohol.
Emma’s 20-year-old father, Ryker Hooper, who was not wearing a life jacket, also drowned.
On the night of June 3, Pevler took the Hoopers and another man out in a 14-foot aluminum motor boat. They had been camping in Steck Park Recreation Area, about 20 miles northwest of Weiser.
Idaho law requires that children riding in any vessel less than 19 feet long wear approved personal flotation devices. The law also requires that personal flotation devices be available on board for each adult. None of the three young men aboard Pevler’s boat wore lifejackets; no lifejackets were in the boat.
The two survivors — Pevler and Brock Vollmer — admitted drinking alcohol before going out on the water that night, and investigators recovered a cooler of unopened beer from the scene.
It is not illegal to drink alcohol and operate a boat, but it is illegal to operate a boat with a blood alcohol level above .08. A toxicology test on Pevler showed he didn’t have any alcohol in his system that was detectable, according to a Washington County sheriff’s investigator and the prosecutor.
Katy Moeller: 377-6413
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