Inset: Brooklyn Mae Carroll (GoFundMe), Background: Quinten Kight during his sentencing for killing Brooklyn when he ran her and a woman over with his boat in North Carolina (WRAL).
The North Carolina boater who ran over two people, killing a 10-year-old girl and severing a woman’s leg, and then ordered other people to dispose of the cans of booze on board rather than help is headed to prison.
Quinten Kight, 41, was sentenced to between 12 years and just over 15 years in prison after he pleaded guilty on Monday to second-degree murder, death by impaired boating, driving while intoxicated and serious injury by impaired boating, court records say.
The crash on Aug. 2, 2025, killed 10-year-old Brooklyn Mae Carroll and seriously injured Jennifer Stehle, then 41, on the Shearon Harris Reservoir, not far from Raleigh.
Monday’s sentencing hearing was an emotional one.
“I will never be the person I was before August 2, 2025. There will always be someone missing,” Brooklyn’s mother Kim Cannon said, according to a courtroom report from local NBC affiliate WRAL. “Every milestone and every ordinary day, I will carry her absence with me.”
Brooklyn’s father Matt Carroll called his daughter “my little buddy and my best friend.”
“Last August, I not only lost my daughter, I lost my heart, soul, Caniac, Wolfpack cheerleader, dog trainer, best friend in the whole world,” he said, per WRAL.
Stehle, who sat down as she addressed the court, spoke about the impact the crash has had on her. Her life was “permanently altered,” she said.
“Because of the boat crash, I lost my leg,” she said. “In a matter of moments, the life I knew became a life filled with surgeries, recovery, rehabilitation, pain, adjustments and learning how to do things I never had to think twice about.”
Stehle’s daughter and Brooklyn were best friends. They were having what was supposed to be a fun day on the family’s boat in the water on a steamy August day.
But Kight turned the outing into a disaster when he got behind the wheel of the boat while drunk. On Monday, he briefly addressed the judge and victims.
“I truly am sorry to the families. I can’t even imagine,” he said. “God’s with you, God’s with everyone.”
Brooklyn’s family and Stehle have filed separate negligence lawsuits against Kight and his girlfriend Annemarie Flanigan, who owned the boat, and eight other adults who were on the vessel. Flanigan also stands accused of second-degree murder and other charges. Her next hearing is Sept. 14.
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The lawsuits detail what allegedly occurred on that day.
That morning, Kight and Flanigan purchased some 80 to 100 cans of White Claw and other alcoholic beverages and headed to the lake around 11 a.m., according to the lawsuits.
Brooklyn and her friend went tubing and played on a rope swing. Later in the afternoon, the Stehles drove to an area where they thought it would be safe to swim near the boat. By then, Kight had spent hours drinking and it was “obvious” to anyone on the boat that he was intoxicated, the lawsuits alleged. Kight was the only person to drive the boat even though four people, including Flanigan, were not drinking, plaintiffs’ lawyers write.
Around 4:30 p.m., Kight was pulling two wakeboarders when one of them fell off. Kight allegedly kept driving at a “high rate of speed,” looking back at the wakeboarders while still “headed straight” for Brooklyn and Stehle, according to the suits. He allegedly drove the boat “directly over” the two swimmers.
One of the people on the boat said she heard a “weird noise” and they looked in the water and saw the two swimmers “floating in the water.” The boat hit them so hard the propeller broke, the suits stated.
Kight allegedly kept driving for another 150 yards and told his friends to “toss everything overboard.” Investigators found 39 empty alcohol cans in the boat plus another 50 or more in the water, plaintiffs allege. When cops spoke to Kight, they noted he had “red and glassy eyes, that his speech was hard to understand, and that he had strong odor of alcohol.”
More than five hours later, authorities took a blood sample showing he had a blood alcohol content of 0.17, more than twice the legal limit, according to the suits.
“Collectively, Defendants’ reckless and senseless actions and decisions that day caused devastating and irreversible injuries, shattering the lives and wellbeing of two innocent families forever,” the Stehle lawsuit stated.
Kight and Flanigan remain in the Chatham County Jail on $1 million bonds.
As Law&Crime previously reported, Flanigan in September 2025 requested her bond be lowered by half. Flanigan’s attorney, Joshua Xerri, said his client is a recently retired U.S. Army combat nurse who has a 19-year-old son with autism in need of her care.
“Every day that Ms. Flanigan is in jail is a day that her son is not getting the care and support he needs and was getting from Flanigan,” Xerri said, according to a courtroom report from local ABC affiliate WTVD. “There is no allegation from the state that Ms. Flanigan had been drinking, intoxicated, or operating the boat in any way.”
But prosecutors argued Flanigan’s bond should stay the same, even though she was sober at the time of the crash.
“What we have, Your Honor, is someone who had years of watching this guy hurt people when he gets drunk,” District Attorney Jeff Nieman said, per local NBC affiliate WRAL. “She’s the one who handed the keys to a drunk person.”
The post White Claw-drinking boater who killed 10-year-old girl and amputated woman’s leg when he plowed over them learns his fate first appeared on Law & Crime.
