Just weeks before the captain in a fatal Florida Keys parasailing accident was set to stand trial, attorneys are clashing over which federal charges he should face.
A jury trial is set to begin on Monday, July 27 in Key West for Daniel Gavin Couch, who captained Lighthouse Parasail’s M/V Airborne during the Memorial Day 2022 tragedy that killed visiting 33-year-old Supraja Alaparthi.
While taking a flight with her 10-year-old son and 9-year-old nephew in Marathon, a strong gust of wind “pegged” the parasail, rendering the boat’s winch unable to retract the chute and dragging the boat toward shallow flats with 13 passengers aboard. Losing control, Couch cut the line tethering the three victims, who were dragged across the water before colliding with the Old Seven Mile Bridge.
Marathon captain John Callion responded as a Good Samaritan in the area, cutting the three victims free from their harnesses and taking them to shore, where Supraja was pronounced dead.
Already facing civil suits and state manslaughter charges, Couch was indicted in August 2025 on a federal seaman’s manslaughter charge, which applies to cases of unintentional deaths as a result of maritime misconduct, negligence or inattention. If convicted, the charge carries a maximum prison sentence of 10 years.
But one day before attorneys were scheduled to submit jury instructions for an April 20 trial, federal prosecutors told Judge Jose E. Martinez they intended to supersede the original charge. A voluntary manslaughter charge was filed the following day, defined as an intentional killing without malice, typically reserved for killings committed “in the heat of passion,” when the alleged perpetrator loses self-control. The charge carries a 15-year maximum prison sentence.
A motion to dismiss the charge filed by federal public defender Ian McDonald argued the new charge was “wholly inapplicable to the facts of this case,” adding details absent from the preliminary incident reports obtained in May 2022 by the Keys Weekly.
According to McDonald’s motion, Couch and his mate Tanner Helmers made four attempts to rescue the passengers after severing the line, trying to deploy a “chute wrangler” safety device that would have deflated and stopped the parasail — a device he says was explained to the passengers in a safety briefing before their flight.
In one attempt, Couch dropped Helmers into the water wearing a life jacket to manually grab the chute wrangler, along with other attempts using a boat hook and reaching for the wrangler himself.
McDonald accuses prosecutors of using the addition as a strategic “eleventh hour charge” without any new evidence in the case, arguing that the last-minute change would undo months of work to prepare for an entirely different charge.
“The government appears to have added it so the jury might ‘compromise,’ giving Mr. Couch a ‘break’ by convicting on what it perceives as the less serious – un-‘intentional’ seaman’s manslaughter charge (not knowing that it has been the charge all along in the case),” McDonald wrote. “The charge represents such a clear error of law that it should never be allowed in the trial. If it is, the damage will have already been done.”
In response, Assistant U.S. attorney Breezye Telfair argued that the original charge could be vulnerable to dismissal if the defense could prove the court did not have “admiralty jurisdiction” over the “navigable waters of the United States” where the incident occurred.
“I was not the original prosecutor who made that charging decision (for seaman’s manslaughter),” Telfair told Martinez in an April 16 hearing. “I saw that there may be an issue with the admiralty law jurisdiction, and therefore … we made the decision to … issue a superseding indictment against Mr. Couch.”
Telfair reiterates Alaparthi’s death as a direct effect of Couch’s actions, framing the decision to cut the line as an intentional choice made in a fearful state of mind.
“Evidence presented at trial will establish the multitude of other things that (Couch) could have done and should have done before cutting the line in 25 to 30 mph winds,” she wrote. “(Couch) killed (Alaparthi) in a state of mind fueled by fear and his fear, whether reasonable or not, did not justify his use of deadly force.”
Martinez denied McDonald’s motion on April 21, ruling the additional charge did not infringe on Couch’s right to a fair trial or violate his constitutional rights, and that the captain could still be acquitted of the voluntary manslaughter charge during the course of the trial. Extending the trial’s start date for three months, proceedings will now begin July 27 in Key West.
