MANDEL: Who was at the wheel of fatal boat crash?

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One moment she was sitting in a pleasure boat travelling at high speed through the darkness of Lake Ontario. And the next, she was thrown into the cool water, the boat was flipped on top of her and she was desperately trying to find her way to the surface.

The harrowing memory leaves Andrea Miguel fighting back tears as she testifies in the downtown Toronto courtroom and is taken back to that deadly night of May 31, 2022. “It’s traumatizing to know that at the time I was underneath the boat,” she wept.

“I thought I was going to die.”

But she was one of the lucky ones. Of the 10 people aboard the 30-foot cruiser, two wouldn’t make it: the bodies of Megan Wu, 24, of Newmarket and Julio Abrantes, 34, of Richmond Hill, were trapped and recovered the next day.

Filip Grkovksi, 41, has pleaded not guilty to two counts of criminal negligence causing death, four counts of criminal negligence causing bodily harm; two counts of impaired operation causing death; and four counts of impaired operation causing bodily harm.

But at issue at the judge-alone trial seems to be who was the captain when the boat hit a rock island breakwall near Tommy Thompson Park and capsized.

Miguel and her friend, Kristina Vasilyeva, both 23, were spending the day at the Scarborough Bluffs when they were invited by Grkovski’s girlfriend to come on his power boat cruiser. They joined about eight others at the marina and Grkovski drove them out to “tie up” with more than five other boats near Centre Island.

Everybody was drinking and socializing, Miguel said, but after about six hours of partying, the girlfriends were ready to leave.

“I feel like people were drinking a lot; it wasn’t a safe and welcoming environment anymore,” she recalled. When she heard people talking about drugs, she and Vasilyeva decided to try and get off the boat — but no water taxi would pick them up in the middle of the lake.

“We just didn’t feel safe,” she testified. “We just wanted to go home.”

Finally, just before midnight, they headed back. Vasilyeva said she doesn’t remember who was driving, though she recalls another man was with Grkovski by the wheel. Miguel recalled Grkovski and “Eddie” taking turns and her two short cellphone videos show each man driving.

But her last recollection before the crash? “It was Filip,” she testified.

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“I was really tired so I was sort of dozing off, opening and closing my eyes. And then I felt three large bumps. I didn’t really think of it as much, because I thought it was just the boat going in rough waters,” Miguel recalled.

“After the third bump, that’s when the boat flips and eventually I’m underneath the water and I just remember it was dark, it was enclosed.”

Vasilyeva said the boat suddenly sped up “really, really really fast” just before they crashed and flipped over. “I’m in the water. I’m trying to feel the boat. It’s on top of me from what it felt like and I saw this light which I swam towards, and I popped my head in what looked like an operating thing of gears so I was able to breathe after what felt like minutes,” she recalled.

“I pushed my head back into the water and swam towards my right side for a long time and then I was able to get out.”

Miguel managed to dive through an opening she saw at her feet and surfaced, screaming for her friend. She saw Vasilyeva in the open water. “She told me to get far away from the boat because it appeared it might blow up.”

By some miracle, the two friends were alive. Six others would survive as well — while two others couldn’t be rescued in time.

The trial continues.

mmandel@postmedia.com