Missouri duck boat employees charged with manslaughter in 2018 disaster that killed 17 passengers

• Missouri's attorney general announced charges against three Ride the Ducks Branson employees on Thursday.
• The men are charged in the 2018 duck boat disaster, when a vessel sank in a Missouri Lake, killing 17 people.
• Each of the employees is charged with 17 counts of first-degree involuntary manslaughter.

Three employees of a Missouri duck boat tour have been charged with manslaughter in connection to the 2018 capsizing disaster in which 17 passengers died, Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt announced on Friday.

Ride the Ducks Branson employees Kenneth Scott McKee, Charles Baltzell, and Curtis Lanham are each charged with 17 counts of first-degree involuntary manslaughter, Schmitt said in a statement.

McKee, the captain of the boat, was also charged with five counts of first-degree endangering the welfare of a child as a Class A felony and seven counts of first-degree endangering the welfare of a child as a Class D felony.

There were 29 passengers and two employees on the duck boat when it sank in Table Rock Lake in Branson, Missouri, on July 19, 2018, during a severe thunderstorm that caused high winds and rough waters.

The ground-to-water hybrid boat's road driver and 16 passengers died in the accident, and among the victims were nine members of one family.

In a probable cause statement, Missouri Highway Patrol Corporal Mark Green said Mckee "failed to exercise his duties and responsibilities as a licensed Captain, by entering the lake during a severe thunderstorm warning," and failed to "follow policy or training guidelines in that he failed to have passengers don personal flotation devices."

Green said that Baltzell, an operations supervisor with the duck boat company, and Lanham, a general manager for the company, failed to monitor the weather and cease operations of the boat during a storm.