Cletus A. Barsch III was sentenced to 24 years in prison yesterday after pleading guilty to homicide caused by boating while intoxicated.
According to lakeexpo.com Barsch, 43, admitted he was drunk when he was at the wheel of a 2000 Baja performance boat running downstream near Bagnell Dam on Missouri’s Lake of the Ozarks at around 9:45 p.m. on May 26, 2018. The Baja collided with a 2003 Formula and the crash left 20-year-old Alec Potthoff with a serious injury that he later died from in August 2018. Other passengers on both boats reportedly sustained minor injuries in the crash.
On Wednesday, Barsch was sentenced in Miller County Circuit Court to 10 years in prison for boating while intoxicated-homicide and 7 years in prison each on two counts of BWI-serious physical injury. The sentences were executed concurrently.
In his plea, Barsch was quoted as saying he “operated a vessel while under the influence of alcohol and in the course thereof, (he) acted with criminal negligence thereby causing the death” of another occupant in another boat. He also pleaded guilty to causing “serious physical injury” to two more occupants in the boat.
