JACKSONVILLE, Fla. >> Regina Brinson heard a crack before the metal walkway gave way beneath her feet, plunging her into the water beneath the state-operated ferry dock on Georgia’s Sapelo Island. As strong currents swept her and others who fell away from shore, she called to her 79-year-old uncle: “Grab my hand!”

Isaiah Thomas tried grasping his niece’s hand. But he also clutched her shirt, dragging her head below the water’s surface. Three days after the weekend tragedy, Brinson sobbed loudly Tuesday as she recalled her struggle to survive and what happened next.

“I had to take his fingers, one-by-one, and peel them off of my shirt,” Brinson said. “And I pulled him back up to the top, and I saw his face. And I was like, ‘Oh my God, what did I do? What did I do?’ And he floated by me.”

Thomas was among seven people who died Saturday after the dock gangway collapsed with dozens standing on it, waiting to board an afternoon ferry for a ride back to the mainland. The tragedy happened on a day when 700 people visited Sapelo Island for a fall festival celebrating its tiny Gullah-Geechee community of Black slave descendants.

Families of the dead want a federal investigation

Brinson and grieving relatives of two others who died stood by civil rights attorney Ben Crump at a news conference in Jacksonville on Tuesday as he called on the U.S. Justice Department to investigate. The Georgia Department of Natural Resources, which operates the dock, is leading the state’s investigation into why the aluminum gangway failed. The dock was built in 2021. Crump said he doesn’t trust the state to investigate itself.

Those killed were all between the ages of 73 and 93, but Crump said their advanced ages made their deaths no less devastating.

“These senior citizens were vibrant people,” Crump said. He added: “They did not die of natural causes. They died of negligence.”

Tragedy strikes a historic Black community

Still largely unspoiled and untethered to the mainland by roads or bridges, Sapelo Island is home to one of the South’s last remaining communities of people descended from slaves known as Gullah, or Geechee in Georgia. Scholars say their isolation from the mainland enabled Gullah-Geechee people to retain much of their African heritage.

But only a few dozen residents remain in Hogg Hummock, founded after the Civil War by the enslaved Africans who worked the island’s cotton plantation. Many island descendants have left for jobs on the mainland. Others have sold to outsiders land their families held for generations. A lack of services, including emergency resources, and battles over property tax increases have prompted remaining residents to fight their local government in court for more than a decade.

By contrast, the Cultural Day festival held Saturday was a time for celebrating as island natives and visitors mingled over gumbo and smoked mullet, and during demonstrations for basket weaving and fishing net crafting.

Seniors who perished are remembered as active, generous and kind

Thomas had traveled to the island with dozens of members of a senior-citizens club based in Jacksonville. Since the 1990s, he had lived with an older sister who served as his caregiver. His family knew him as “Bubba,” and he was a dedicated church member who volunteered at its soup kitchen, said his sister, Katrena Alexander.

“I don’t think you could find anybody any kinder,” Alexander said. “He would do anything you asked him to do. He would never say no.”

At the island dock Saturday, Thomas and his niece, Brinson, were helping a family friend cross the gangway with her walker. Brinson said she watched in horror as Carlotta McIntosh toppled from the fractured gangway. She didn’t survive.

McIntosh was 93 years old, but she rarely stopped moving. She had taken a cruise in December, and told her granddaughter that the secret to her longevity was reciting the Serenity Prayer daily.

“There there was no old in her,” said the granddaughter, Ebony Davis. “She was vibrant. She was spunky. She was feisty. She was my world. She died doing exactly what she wanted to do: live life to the fullest.”

Jacquelyn Carter, 75, was a third member of the Jacksonville seniors’ club who died on Sapelo Island. She had planned several upcoming trips, according to her daughter Vanessa Williams. When she was home, Carter would often check on friends who weren’t so spry — making sure they had food and their medication, even helping clean their houses.

“There was nothing wrong with her,”li Williams said. “She was perfectly healthy and perfectly fine. And she should have come home.”