Darius Marshall had just finished a shift as a security guard at the United Nations when he called his banker brother, Eros, at his Tribeca office. But Eros was busy.
Darius “got off early and stopped by; I was on a project and couldn’t get away. I told him that I’d have to catch him next time,” he told The Post.
So Darius boarded the Andrew J. Barberi ferryboat at Whitehall Terminal in Lower Manhattan, and set off for his new home on Staten Island, where he had just moved with his wife of four months, Cindy.
Just two years earlier, Darius had barely survived the collapse of the World Trade Center on 9/11. He was knocked unconscious by falling debris and was finally found by his family on a hospital ferryboat in New Jersey 13 hours after the attacks.
This time, Darius would not make it.
Twenty minutes after leaving the tip of Manhattan, as the 3,335-ton, 310-foot-long Barberi approached the St. George Terminal, the off-course vessel plowed into a maintenance pier at full speed, piercing a 250-foot wide hole in its starboard side and ripping through the main deck where many of the 1,500 passengers, Darius included, lined up to disembark.
At 25, Darius Marshall was the youngest of 11 people to lose their lives that day. “He was my younger brother and my best friend,” said Eros Marshall said of the Wagner College graduate.
Oct. 15 will mark the 20th anniversary of the ferry tragedy, caused when the man at the ship’s wheel, Assistant Capt. Richard Smith, 55, blacked out at the helm after taking strong prescription medication for a bad back.
Seventy people were injured, some horrifically maimed.
Doctors at Staten Island hospitals performed amputations on four people, and treated untold broken bones, crushed pelvises and life-changing trauma.
James McMillan Jr., 44, of the Bronx, lost the use of his arms and his legs. Paul Esposito, 24, lost both legs above the knee.
In 2004, Esposito told The Post he still had nightmares but wanted to live a full life: “I want to have a positive attitude. I want to bring some good out of a bad situation.”
Barbara A. Butcher, an investigator with the city Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, was assigned to the case.
“My first view of the destruction of the ferry was heartbreaking,” she recalled. “So many personal items strewn through the wreckage of the interior, and then the sight of human remains crushed beneath the seats and windows.”
Worse was to follow. “I remember telling a young wife that her husband was identified among the victims,” she recalls. “Her screams still echo in my mind.”
Eros Marshall returned to his home that night in Sparta, NJ, and turned on his television — his first glimpse of what had happened.
He called Darius, but only got his voicemail.
“I knew something was wrong,” he said. “My wife and I drove to a facility that the Red Cross set up on Staten Island. It took an hour or so before they told us that he had passed away in the accident.
“I wasn’t angry, I was devastated. I remember thinking – how am I going to tell my mother?”
In the immediate aftermath of the crash, Capt. Smith fled the scene to his home in Staten Island.
After locking himself in his bathroom, he tried to slit his wrists and attempted to shoot himself twice in the chest with a pellet gun.
His suicide attempt failed when his family and some of his co-workers kicked the door down to save him. Smith, who still lives on Staten Island, did not return messages seeking comment.
In August 2004, Smith pleaded guilty to 11 counts of seaman’s manslaughter and, 17 months later, was sentenced to 18 months in prison.
In the Brooklyn federal courthouse, he said he would “regret for the rest of my life that I did not call in sick.”
Patrick Ryan, the director of ferry operations, also pled guilty to one count of seaman’s manslaughter and making a false statement to investigators.
He admitted he had failed to enforce the rule requiring two qualified pilots to be in the wheelhouse at all times. He was sentenced to one year and one day in prison. He could not be reached for comment.
The ship’s captain, Michael Gansas, who was supposed to be in the pilothouse alongside Smith, avoided prosecution but was fired by the city Department of Transportation for refusing to cooperate with investigators.
Now 58, Gansas lives in Hazlet NJ. He did not return messages seeking comment.
A scathing report from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) exposed systemic issues with ferry safety, and criticized the DOT for its failure “to implement and oversee safe, effective operating procedures.”
It also cited “the failure of the captain to exercise his command responsibility over the vessel by ensuring the safety of its operations.”
Coast Guard safety recommendations dating back as far as 1998 had also been ignored, investigators found.
A raft of civil lawsuits were filed against the city, which paid out more than $90 million in settlements to victims and their families. McMillan received $18.3 million and Esposito was awarded $8.9 million.
The NTSB report recommended a litany of reforms for the DOT, the US Coast Guard, the Passenger Vessel Association and those states that operate public ferries, chiefly regarding stricter oversight of licensed pilots’ medical certification and the implementation of safety management programs.
The damaged pier would require $1.4 million of repairs, and the Barberi itself needed a $7 million overhaul.
When it was relaunched in June 2004, a memorial plaque honoring the victims was installed in its deck.
But it wouldn’t be the last time the ill-fated ship was involved in a major accident.
On May 8, 2010, a faulty valve that prevented the propellers from stopping caused the boat to slam into a dock at the St. George Terminal once more, resulting in 40 passengers being hospitalized for minor injuries.
For Butcher, who chronicled her investigations in “What The Dead Know: Learning About Life As A New York City Death Investigator,” the scale of the Staten Island ferry disaster may not have been the same as others she worked on, like 9/11 and the 2004 tsunami in East Asia, but was no less important.
“Although the Staten Island Ferry crash was a smaller incident, it mattered to each and every family that their loved one was found and identified,” she said. “The pain is the same for each of us who loses someone we love in a tragedy.”
For Eros Marshall, 47, and his family, there is no bitterness, although the pain remains.
“We’re not an angry family and it’s good to know that NYC has made changes to ferry operations to minimize the chances of a similar accident in the future,” he said. But “my family still struggles with the loss all of these years later and I don’t think we’ll ever get past it. “We miss Darius every day.”
The Andrew J. Barberi, in operation for 42 years, was retired on Sept. 28, just three weeks before the 20th anniversary of its worst tragedy. Like all retired ferryboats, it will be sold at auction, the city said.
