When Regina Brinson reached the middle of the aluminum walkway, she heard it crack and watched in horror as it broke just in front of her feet, plunging the elderly people ahead of her into the fast-moving water.
Soon, her portion of the gangway to the Sapelo Island ferry was in the water, too, and the current was carrying her downstream.
Brinson described her experience of the Oct. 19 tragedy that killed seven people during a news conference Wednesday. Her attorney, well-known civil rights lawyer Ben Crump, called the conference to announce his firm was filing a "multimillion-dollar" lawsuit against the companies involved in designing, engineering and building the gangway in 2022.
Dozens were reportedly on it that afternoon, preparing to take a ferry operated by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources from the Marsh Landing Dock back to the mainland when the 80-foot structure buckled and collapsed.
"When people put profit over safety, you have the traumatic loss like she and her cousin Jeff Thomas had," Crump said at the gathering outside the visitor center of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Historical Park.
Thomas' father, Brinson's uncle, died that day.
The setting for the news conference was deliberate because Crump's clients -- 30 people who were injured or related to four of the dead -- are descendants of West Africans who were enslaved on that barrier island. The tragedy unfolded during their annual Sapelo Cultural Day, a celebration of the island's historic Gullah Geechee community.
"I wonder, honestly, if this case would have gotten more attention if it were all elderly white people," Crump said, adding, "Black tears are just as valuable as white tears."
Crump, who has offices in Decatur and in seven other cities across the country, has won clients millions of dollars in high-profile, race-related lawsuits. Among those he has represented are the families of Ahmaud Arberry, George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.
Brinson held a crumpled tissue in her right hand, her eyes red, as she recounted the worst part of her story. While floating downstream, she spotted her uncle Isaiah Thomas in the water next to her. She told him to grab her hand, and he did. But he also clutched at her collar, dragging her beneath the surface.
Brinson, who said she cannot swim, said God told her what she had to do next: go up for air!
"I'm underwater, peeling finger by finger by finger off my shirt, having to release my uncle," she said. Once free, she broke for the surface, then saw him float by. She was distraught as she dog paddled toward shore, thinking, "Oh my God, what did I do?"
Crump said she did nothing wrong, that the companies responsible for the gangway forced her to choose survival.
In addition to Thomas' family, Crump's lawyers are representing the families of Jacqueline Crews Carter, Cynthia Gibbs, and Carlotta McIntosh, who also died that day.
Crump said the lawsuit only targets companies responsible for the gangway. So far, he said, the state of Georgia is not a defendant.
Collaborating attorney Jeffrey Goodman, a Philadelphia lawyer known for handling product liability and structural collapse cases, said the gangway should have been able to support 100 pounds per square foot but was instead designed to hold less than a third of that.
The suit was filed Tuesday in Gwinnett County. Goodman said that venue was chosen because Gwinnett is the base of one of the defendants, Centennial Contractors Enterprises, which he characterized as "right in the middle of what went wrong."
The company did not immediately return a call for comment.
Other lawyers are representing survivors of the other three who died that day -- William Johnson, Jr., Queen Welch and Charles Houston -- as part of the same lawsuit.
Houston's daughter, Heather Houston-Meeks, is represented by the national injury law firm Morgan & Morgan, which said she was on the gangway with her father when it broke.
The firm previously represented four victims of a 2022 incident in which a boat ramp in St. Marys 75 miles south of Sapelo Island collapsed, injuring several people.
