Haunting audio captured the 911 call placed immediately after an alleged drunken grandfather crashed his boat at the Jersey Shore, killing his two young grandchildren.
Stephen Schneider, 64, had allegedly drunk twice the legal limit before plowing his 28-foot boat into a wooden channel marker in Barnegat Bay after a family dinner last month, fatally flinging his grandchildren, 7 and 9, into the water.
“We have one on the boat and my husband’s in the water trying to get the other child out,” the children’s grandmother, Laurie Schneider, 64, yells on the phone from the boat, according to audio obtained by NBC New York.
The 911 dispatcher can be heard asking if the children were unconscious, to which the distressed grandma replies, “Yes, yes they are!”
Later in the chaotic call, the grandmother relays to the dispatcher the exact location where they crashed off of Berkeley Township around 9 p.m. on July 19.
“Stephen, are we near channel marker 39? I think my husband’s in the water trying to get one of the other kids out!” she said.
Stephen and Laurie Schneider pulled Mya Bella Golabek, 9, and her brother Sigmund Paul Golabek, 7, from the dark waters.
The grandparents attempted CPR before the kids were rushed to a local hospital where they both died.
Schneider, who prosecutors say had a blood alcohol content of 0.16, voluntarily surrendered himself at the Berkley Township Police Department in Ocean County.
He was charged with two counts of reckless vessel homicide/death by vessel as well as operating a vessel under the influence and reckless operation of a vessel.
Schneider told cops he had three beers over two hours while at dinner with his wife, daughter, son-in-law, and two grandkids.
The children’s father, Stephen Schneider’s son-in-law, pleaded for him to be released from jail last week.
The judge ultimately granted the request.
“He’s been there for our family in ways that words cannot fully express. Our family is better because of him,” Schneider’s attorney read from a letter written by the heartbroken dad in court.
“He’s a wonderful father-in-law, a loving grandfather and a man with a generous heart,” he wrote.
