Boat skipper who killed friend Wei Chen on Motutapu dive trip to pay $150,000 reparation to family

Nan Jiang holds a picture of her ex-husband Wei Chen. Photo / Dean Purcell

The day after her ex-husband was killed on a dive trip, Nan Jiang called the boat's skipper to ask what happened - only to get through to a man who sounded relaxed about it all.

"Wasn't he on your boat?" she asked Zhenhua Yang, the man at the helm of his luxury yacht when its propellers struck his friend Wei Chen, killing him almost instantly.

Chen didn't know how to dive well and that's why he didn't come out alive, she recalled Yang saying.

"He has never contacted me, he never even sent a letter. He has never apologised," she told the court as Yang was fined $5850 at the Auckland District Court this morning for causing his friend's death.

Judge David Sharp also ordered him to pay expenses and a $150,000 emotional harm reparation payment to the victim's family members.

In court, Yang took the opportunity to finally apologise.

"I am extremely sorry to [Chen's] wife, his child, his partner, his parents, our friends," he whispered in Mandarin, wearing a face mask.

"Deeply sorry," his interpreter added in English.

On February 22, 2020, Yang took a group of his family and friends out on his boat for a scuba diving trip off Motutapu Island.

Court documents show the group of nine included his friends Andrew Gan, a PADI dive master with a skipper ticket who has been driving boats for nearly 20 years, Gan's girlfriend who is a rescue diver, and the victim Chen, who had just obtained his open water diving qualification at the time.

Also on the boat were Yang's parents, fiancee and young daughter.

There was heavy rain and wind but the group went ahead with their dive plans.

Yang did not conduct a weather review before the trip, nor a safety briefing with the passengers.

He instead asked Gan, the dive master, to introduce his friends and show everyone where the life jackets and toilets were.

The sea was choppy and it was raining when the divers entered the water.

The divers split into pairs once underwater, with the two experienced divers pairing up, leaving Chen with another diver, Yung.

After about 20 minutes, Chen and Yung came up close to shore about 50 to 100 metres from the boat. Yang pulled the anchor up and drove towards them.

The two men were struggling to climb onto the boat using a nylon ladder with Yang's father and fiancee helping, instead of using a metal ladder built into the rear platform of the boat.

Just then, sea conditions deteriorated, the wind and swell causing the boat to move towards the rocks, almost colliding several times.

Yang had moved to the helm of the vessel where he did not have a clear view of either diver.

Jiang said she could not put a dollar value the emotional harm she and her son continue to suffer. Photo / Dean Purcell

He yelled at his fiancee to tell Chen and Yang to swim to either side of the boat but did not confirm if she had told them before putting the boat into reverse to move it away from the rocks.

At some stage while the boat was in reverse, its propeller struck Chen. No one knew.

Yung had just managed to climb onboard when the boat crashed into the rocks. The group were looking for Chen in the water when the experienced divers Gan and Song resurfaced.

It was only then that they spotted Chen floating face down in the water.

An autopsy found he was killed by multiple blunt force chop wounds, the propellers cutting off his right arm and thighs, and cutting his flank and back.

Yang told police he thought the divers were already on either side of the boat and he had to reverse urgently because they were about to hit a rock.

He admitted he could not see what his fiancee and father were doing because his view was blocked by a sofa, and he did not wait to get confirmation that the divers were safely to the side before reversing.

'Deeply constrained'

Yang learned how to operate the boat from a two-day course and maritime exam that focused on theoretical training in 2018, the year he bought the boat.

"This is a tragic incident of the worst kind," Judge Sharp had said in a June sentence indication.

He said it was not Yang's intention to hurt his friend at any stage, but he did it because of inexperience and a lack of formal training.

"There has to be deterrence," the judge said, but for a person like Yang who has no criminal history the deterrence was the tragic consequence he would have to live with.

At sentencing today, he said Yang did not meet with the victims as part of restorative justice, but people facing charges were normally not advised to go near victims while the court case was ongoing.

"The impression I have is he is deeply sorry but deeply constrained until today," Judge Sharp said.

Chen was 39 and left behind his parents, a partner, and ex-wife Jiang with whom he has a 5-year-old son.

"Every day and every second of the day, my son must learn to grow up without a daddy," Jiang said, reading her victim impact statement at the hearing.

Outside court, she told Open Justice she was disappointed with the outcome and called Yang's apology a "disgrace".

He stood facing the judge with his back to the public gallery, where Jiang and Chen's current partner were sitting.

"He said sorry to the judge, and did not even have the decency to turn around and say it to us."

Maritime New Zealand investigations manager Pete Dwen said the tragedy involved several safety failings that ended up taking a life.

"Mr Yang did not keep an eye on the divers, allowed his vessel to drift and then decided to reverse, without confirming that people in the water behind the vessel were out of the way.

"Always check; the water is not the place for assumptions," he said.