Decision on trial in duck boat tragedy delayed until 2022

(AP) — A judge says he will decide next year whether three men charged after a tourist boat sank in Missouri in 2018 will go to trial. 

The three men, Kenneth McKee, Curtis Lanham and Charles Baltzell, were charged after a vessel known as a duck boat sank on Table Rock Lake near Branson on July 19, 2018, killing 17 people. 

After a two-day preliminary hearing, Associate Circuit Judge Alan Mark Blankenship on Thursday gave prosecutors until the end of the year to respond to defense attorneys’ request that the case be dismissed. 

The judge said he will set a court date next year to announce his decision.