Death of a Lobster Diver

By Rick Boettger

There is a small but important sliver of good news relating to a horrific tragedy.

Navy Veteran Devin Ordway, 27, was killed by a propeller while snorkeling for lobster spots the day before mini-season in July 2023.  He left behind a 5-year-old stepson of his partner Michelle, then pregnant with their son, born Devin Jr.  He was a respected electrical lineman.  They’d just bought a house.  He never got to live in it or see his new son.

What on earth could in any way be good about this?  It isn’t much, but worth my writing about it because of its rarity: a government agency is holding itself accountable for the alleged terrible error that caused this tragedy. Our Fish and Wildlife Commission quickly began to inspect whether the officer who recovered Devin’s body made the tragic mistake that killed him.

A year-long investigation by FWC’s own officer  Glen Way and Lt. Joshua Peters sadly concluded that, indeed, it was FWC Officer Alexander Allen himself who killed the diver whose body he recovered.  A year may seem like a long time, but as far as government agencies investigating themselves, it was lightning speed.  And always pointed towards justice.

The details as discovered by Way and Peters are sadly simple.  Devin was looking for lobsters to harvest the next day.  He was underwater when FWC Officer Allen came to inspect two boats offshore of the college.  He checked one small Carolina skiff and went to check the other, Devin’s small Mako.  The skiff people told the officer that Devin was in the water, as shown by his dive flag.

Before detailing what happened, I must defend FWC’s monitoring activities.  I moved here in 1996, barely young enough at 48 to learn to free-dive for lobsters and to spear fish.  I joked that my 21-foot Bayliner must have had a transponder on it–“Hey!  Boettger’s on the water!  Hop to it!”–because I had my lobster bag inspected virtually every time I went out.  One lonesome day, not many boats out, I had the same bag of six inspected by TWO different FWC boats (one lobster had been replaced by a larger brother, so there was some variety).  In absolutely every case, I was approached with classic safety protocols and inspected with respect.  I thanked them for doing the Lord’s work to protect our lobster harvest, and cheered them on to nail the heathens who were over their limit or taking shorts.

In this case, for whatever reason, Officer Allen was going too fast: Way and Peters reported that the tracking equipment on Allen’s boat showed he had “not slowed down to idle speed within 300 feet of the dive flag.”  And: the FWC boat was the only one there with a propeller that could have caused the fatal lacerations in Devin’s head.*

The investigators first reported it to FWC’s own Inspector General, who advised getting the FDLE involved as an external investigator.  FDLE accepted the report, so it is in the hands of our State Attorney.  Now before I get too excited about the government holding itself accountable, no one is talking, neither Owen nor the FWC, on advice of their lawyers—because, sadly, the main way deaths like this are in any way held accountable is not through positive actions taken BY our government institutions, but by civil lawsuits AGAINST them.

As is the case here.  Devin’s partner Michelle is suing FWC, and will surely win, as they are in pre-trial negotiations, and sure as heck FWC doesn’t want this case in front of a jury. Of course, what this means is that those actually punished for such sad errors are WE the People, through millions in settlements.  That is, when someone in the government harms a citizen, they get off Scot-free, and the citizens are punished. Sic Semper Cives,

I think this broken reality is irreparable.  It is a close sibling to wives’ not having to testify against their husbands.  I myself could not turn in my wife or daughter for literally murdering someone.  Nor would most of you.  That is why police, soldiers, lawyers, doctors, scientific researchers, therapists, basically all of the professions rarely testify against their own work siblings—to do so is cognitive dissonance and professional death.

At the highest level, people stand behind their so-not-siblings, their presidents, with all of the fervor I show toward Cynthia and Sandra.  As a moral exemplar, it doesn’t get any worse than this: for all of Biden’s and Trump’s manifest crimes, those who vote for them not only would never hold either of them accountable in the slightest degree; worse, would not admit to themselves that the facts are true; nor, worst of all, will not even read or listen to any arguments against them.

For Trump, when he actually was convicted of 34 felonies, four times as many Republicans increased their support, while perversely reducing their respect for the validity of the law.  For Biden, it is absolutely forbidden to discuss: the Afghan debacle; the disastrous Ukraine war; and the Biden family’s 20 shell corporations hiding tens of  millions of dollars paid to them all by foreigners in order to curry Joe Biden’s favor via Hunter.

My continuing gratitude for Konk Life’s being the only publication I know of which would allow that last paragraph.  Even media like News Nation, truly unbiased, never states anything as openly critical of either side—admit it, Blues and Reds who still read me, it turned your stomach, in a truly visceral sense, to read the sentence against Your Guy.  While equally loving the sentence against Their Guy.  It’s the way I would feel if someone damned my wife or daughter—I perhaps should envy the Party patriots who love their candidate that much.

That is why I am in awe of Officer Glen Way and Lt. Joshua Peters for daring to uncover a sad truth.  This will be hard on them, professionally.  Gentlemen, if there is any way I can help either of you, in print, legally, financially, please ask.  We The People are greatly in your debt.  If justice is to be served, this is how it would happen.

But my bet is on us citizens’ ponying up.  Plenty more tax dollars where those came from.

Credit to Rosh Lowe and Chris Gothner for their interview of Michelle, and to Tim O’Hara for the official report.

* Devin’s death could have been my own.  Twice, once in the Bahamas and later in Vanuatu, I was free diving and saw a party boat go by straight over me in what were supposed to be safe waters for snorkelers.  I was 20 feet down, safely below them, but if I had been surfacing, I’d have been dead myself.

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