The grandfather who was charged with negligent homicide for the death of his granddaughter says he is color blind, according to multiple reports.
In an interview with CBS News, Salvatore Anello spoke of the accident. According to the interview, losing his granddaughter was the worst thing to happen to him, and for Anello, everything else that follows the incident, whether being found guilty or not, whatever any possible sentencing could be, would not compare to the grief he has already experienced. Anello said anything that can happen now is “inconsequential” compared to the experience of losing his granddaughter, Chloe Wiegand, according to CBS News.
“Whether, you know, they find me guilty of whatever or not. It’s inconsequential because of what has already happened is so horrible,” Anello said, according to the interview with CBS News. “Chloe being gone is the worst thing ever. So I’m like, whatever. There’s nothing worse that they could do to me than what’s already happened.”
During the interview, Anello also revealed that he is color blind. The interviewer told Anello that people have said the windows on the ship were tinted. Anello said that he is color-blind, and he was told that his color-blindness could be a contributing factor to why he did not realize the window was open, according to CBS News. Anello provided medical evidence to prove his claim, the news outlet reported.
“I am color blind so that’s something that…I don’t know. I just never saw it. I’ve been told that’s a reason it may have happened,” Anello said, according to the Daily Mail.
Anello said that when his granddaughter fell, he looked on the floor for her before he realized that she had fallen out of the ship, 150 feet down. According to the Daily Mail, he said, “Even when she fell—I thought she fell in front of me.”
CBS News reported that jurors might think what Anello did was reckless. According to the Daily Mail, it was reported that the little girl loved to bang on glass, as she would when she attended her brother’s hockey games. Anello thought that it was strange that the glass had been so far from him, not realizing that the glass wasn’t actually there.
“I was trying to hold her like that. From what I remember. … I had her, and I was trying to knock on the glass. And at that point I’m like, ‘Well, I’m going to have to lean farther for her to be able to reach it,’ right? Because I thought it was farther out than I expected,” Anello said, according to CBS News.
“Not knowing that there wasn’t glass there, if somehow I thought that she was going beyond the glass, I wouldn’t have done it. I would have been appalled. I wouldn’t mess around with Chloe in—that kind of—or anybody with a dangerous kind of—never. Never. … If there was some kind of warning sign, we wouldn’t even have been near it. We wouldn’t even have been near it,” Anello said.
According to the interview, Anello said that he couldn’t help but blame himself for the accident, and he thought that maybe if there was some sort of sign for him to see—to tell him that the window had been open—the accident would have never happened.
CBS news reported that Anello’s court date was scheduled for Dec. 17. If convicted of negligent homicide, he faces up to three years in prison.
