By Olivia Scheck
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN — The devastated fiancée of a man killed by a drunk boater near the Statue of Liberty Friday refused to leave her bedroom, even as friends and family gathered to mourn his loss, the New York Daily News reported.
"She's in trauma. She's in shock," a friend outside her family home Sunday morning told the News. "The family got together to say a prayer and she stayed locked up in her room."
Sissy Chacko planned to marry her late fiancée, Jijo Puthuvamkunnath, on Aug. 28, the paper said, before he was tragically killed during a holiday weekend boating accident. The couple had posed for a wedding portrait just two days earlier, according to the News.
The tragedy occurred Friday evening, as Puthuvamkunnath, 30, a physical therapist from Bergenfield, New Jersey, enjoyed a July 4th weekend boat trip with two friends on New York Harbor. The friends were docked near the symbol of America's independence, the Statue of Liberty, when a 30-foot ProLine powerboat, driven by Richard Aquilone, landed on top them.
Aquilone, 39, who works at a Manhattan financial equity firm, had been drinking before he embarked on the holiday boating excursion with his three young children, a 3-year-old and 2-year-old twins, and an unidentified 45-year-old woman.
Puthuvamkunnath was pronounced dead due to head injuries at Jersey City Medical Center, where his two friends, both 30, were treated for minor injuries.
No one on Aquilone's boat was injured. He was arrested, after a Breathalyzer showed he'd been drinking though he was not over the legal limit.
The Jersey City financier, who reportedly lost control of the boat after crossing the wake of a tourist speedboat, was released on Saturday night after posting $50,000 bail.
But Chacko, Puthuvamkunnath's heartbroken fiancée, remained trapped by her own agony.
"She doesn't want to face the outside world," the family friend told the News. "She can't even bear to see his body."
