“He was my best friend,” said Lenny Quintero-Flores, 27, who is accused of pushing 26-year-old Mitchell Harrison into the water Tuesday. “I was playing around.”

The man accused of pushing his friend into the Charles River and causing his death apologized Wednesday as he entered court to face a manslaughter charge, telling reporters “it was an accident.”

Quintero-Flores allegedly pushed his friend into the river about 5 p.m. Police said the two were “heavily intoxicated” during the incident, and authorities later recovered a nearly empty bottle of Svedka vodka from the scene.

Witnesses said Harrison, of Watertown, was submerged 10 to 30 minutes before dive crews pulled him from the river. He was taken to Brigham and Women’s Hospital, where he died several hours later.


Quintero-Flores, of Malden, was initially arrested Tuesday on charges of assault and battery causing serious bodily injury but is now facing the more serious charge of manslaughter, officials said. He was ordered held on $25,000 bail at his Wednesday arraignment in Charlestown Municipal Court.

Quintero-Flores appeared in court in handcuffs and with chains around his ankles. As the complaint was read, he cupped his hands in front of him and gazed toward the ground.

Defense attorney M. Barusch said she was the one who told Quintero-Flores that Harrison died.

Carmen Flores, Quintero-Flores’s mother, briefly talked to reporters outside the courthouse. Pat Greenhouse/Globe Staff

She said the two did not have ill will toward each other, and Quintero-Flores was devastated to learn of the death of his friend.

After the hearing, Barusch described the incident as “a tragedy involving one of Lenny’s best friends.”

Quintero-Flores’s mother, Carmen Flores, said in a telephone interview that her son and Harrison had been best friends for many years. She described Harrison as a second son and a member of the family who was always full of jokes.

“Joking, laughing, that’s the way he was,” she said. “There wasn’t a fight or anything like that. Lenny did not want to kill him — it was a tragic accident.”


Flores said her son has a history of alcohol abuse and had been in and out of rehab. Before the incident, she said, he was doing better.

“This is an experience that has impacted the family and the community, so I hope he learns from it,” she said. “He is not a criminal, and he is not a guy going around and killing people in the community.”

Videos from the scene provided to the Globe by a witness, Julie Dubela, show about a dozen people peering over the edge of the dock. One video shows a man, who appears to be the suspect, sitting with his hand on his head while watching the search crews in the water.

Dubela, 25, said she passed by the dock shortly after the man was pushed in the water. When she arrived, Dubela said, some people were still sunbathing and reading, and she said it did not seem like a “drunk, rowdy commotion.”

“It wasn’t a ferocious panic,” she said. “But then about five to 10 minutes went by, and they couldn’t find him, and then there started to be a bit more of a commotion.”

Dubela said the suspect appeared distraught while authorities searched for his friend.

Sid Turner, the father of the victim, said he had never heard of Quintero-Flores before Tuesday’s incident. He said his son struggled with substance abuse in the past but was released from rehab a few months ago and was on “the straight and narrow.”


In a telephone interview from his home in Texas, he described his son as “the epitome of a good father” to his 8-year-old son.

“He had made it through several [rehab] programs and had come out clean,” Turner said. “He was always there for his boy, always taking him places. I’m not saying he was a saint, but he was a good man and showed that toward his son.”

The cause of Harrison’s death is still under investigation. Quintero-Flores is to appear again in court at a later date.

John R. Ellement of the Globe staff contributed to this report. Trisha Thadani can be reached at trisha.thadani@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @TrishaThadani.