A tragic accident involving a single boat has resulted in the death of an Indiana man and the injury of several others.

Matt Majors, a Boating Investigator with the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency (TWRA), told the Clinton County News that the accident occurred at about 2:30 a.m., Monday, July 11.

According to the officer, Byron Hartman, 24, of Yorkville, Indiana, was air lifted to the University of Tennessee Medical Center in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Majors said that Hartman died the next day as a result of the injuries he received in the accident.

Hartman and four others were on vacation on Dale Hollow Lake, and were traveling in the early morning hours in Wolf River. Majors said the group was vacationing on a rental houseboat, but he was unsure from which marina the houseboat had been rented. The rental houseboat was anchored in the area where the accident took place.

The accident occurred just east of Wolf River Marina, near Clinton County on the Tennessee side of the state boundary in Pickett County.

From the information Officer Majors gave the Clinton County News, the accident apparently occurred just west of an area known as Shear Pin Pass, near Meetinghouse Branch.

“The boat was a 19 foot runabout with five people on board” Majors told the Clinton County News during a telephone interview this week. “They collided with the bank in the darkness and there were a couple of fisherman close by who rescued them from the water.”

Majors said that the victims were taken to Wolf River Marina where they were transported to area hospitals. In addition to the one victim who was airlifted to Knoxville, three more were taken to the Clinton County Hospital and one of those victims was later airlifted to the University of Kentucky Medical Center in Lexington.

Details concerning the names of the other victims or the severity of their injuries were not available. Majors said that all of the passengers in the boat were from Indiana.

Majors said that the driver of the boat, Joseph Bonomini, was charged at the scene with Boating Under the Influence. He added that the charge was later “nullified” and that additional charges would be filed later as the investigation continued.

Majors said that the case would eventually be taken in front of the Pickett County Grand Jury when additional charges would likely be sought.

The boat sank after the impact, and Majors said that TWRA officials had made a successful attempt to locate the sunken vessel, and had marked its location.

“We’re working on our resources at the present time to get the boat to the surface,” Majors said.

He described the area that the boat impacted with as a mud embankment.