Man facing charges after allegedly crashing a power boat into kayakers in Thurston County

WOODINVILLE, Wash. — A man is facing criminal charges in Thurston County, suspected of driving a power boat that crashed into kayakers on Puget Sound last weekend.

A father and son from Woodinville say they’re lucky to be alive.

“It’s a tandem kayak and we’ve done this for over a decade.”

Phillip Hill and his son Anthony say they were nearly killed when the boater slammed into their kayak at Carlyon Beach.

“As we were leaving, there was a group of kayakers who was coming in from the same direction that we were going,” said Anthony.

The Hills say they were in the water for ten minutes when they spotted a boat coming at them full speed.

“We waved our paddles, we were screaming profanities and trying to get his attention. We just had to bail out and we went out the front, I went over the side under the kayak and the boat went right over the top of kayak,” said Phillip.

The driver sped off, after shredding the kayak.

Then Anthony came up first out of the water, yelling for his dad.

“What’s going through my head is I’m going to have to pull him to shore for CPR or start packing his wounds if he got hit by the propeller and it was horrifying and I thought that I had just lost my dad,” said Anthony.

Jet skiers took the two back to shore, where medics treated them for cuts and bruises.

But the incident is still taking a toll on the family.

“He keeps having nightmares. When you close your eyes at night, you can just see the boat bearing down on you. It takes a while to get that out of your head and I think it’ll take a while to get over it,” said Phillip.

Thurston County Sheriff’s investigators say the suspect was driving his employer’s boat.

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