SAN DIEGO -- After a week of listening to others talk about him during legal proceedings that could send him to prison, Coast Guard Petty Officer 3rd Class Paul Ramos stood up in a military courtroom Friday and spoke for himself.

"Every day, before I go to sleep, I think about Anthony DeWeese," the tall thin guardsman said, referring to the 8-year-old Rancho Penasquitos boy killed last year when the patrol vessel Ramos was helming crashed into a recreational vessel filled with members of three families on San Diego Bay.

The 21-year-old defendant, who is charged with involuntary manslaughter, read from a handwritten statement during the final day of a weeklong preliminary hearing in the San Francisco Bay Area, pausing when his quiet voice thickened with emotion.

He talked about the evening of Dec. 20, when he piloted the 33-foot Coast Guard vessel, a type that is now controversial for use in ports because of visibility limitations and its powerful engines, across the harbor to assist a boater stuck in the mud of the Harbor Island marina.

"When I heard the emergency broadcast, I just wanted to help," Ramos said. "I think every mariner deserves the Coast Guard's help, no matter how big or small. I gave 100 percent to every mariner I assisted."

Ramos and two other San Diego-based Coast Guard crew members will learn in the coming weeks if they will face courts-martial over the death of the third-grader and the injuries of 12 other people aboard the DeWeese family's 24-foot Sea Ray during the annual holiday, Parade of Lights.

The hearing in Alameda, headquarters of the Coast Guard's District 11Commander, ended over the objections of defense attorneys who contended that the distance from San Diego prevented them from producing witnesses crucial to their cases.

Ramos faces the most serious allegation in the case and could serve 17 years in a military prison if convicted on all counts against him. Petty Officer 2nd Class Ian Howell, a reservist on active duty, and Petty Officer 3rd Class Brittany Rasmussen have also been charged. A fourth defendant, Petty Officer 3rd Class Lavelle Teague, is facing minor charges and is being handled separately. On the final day of the hearing, personal details emerged about each of the generally stoic Coast Guard personnel at the defense tables.

Rasmussen is 25 and Howell is 28. Teague is the oldest at 30. As in other military branches, it is common in the Coast Guard for people in their 20s to be entrusted with powerful, expensive machinery and vehicles.

Despite his youth, Ramos was the most experienced boat pilot in the group. He has clocked the most hours on the water, and an investigator who testified on Thursday said Ramos had a reputation around the San Diego station as the best coxswain, or boat commander.

In court Friday, Ramos' former boss, Lt. Steven Schultz, praised him as sincere and intent on doing his job well. Schultz said the "very dedicated" guardsman returned to the boat dock following the fatal crash in tears, distraught, and covered in blood.

Clouding that testimony, however, were statements from another guardsman, Petty Officer 2nd Class James Helt. He said Ramos' helmsmanship had to be corrected from time to time. He cited one offshore mission when a boat crew entreated him to slow down because they were getting battered about in the rolling seas.

Helt opined that Ramos' boat-pilot qualification should have been suspended after that incident. He continued to say that Ramos destroyed an $18,000 engine by running it into a commonly used underwater ramp at North Island Naval Air Station.

Testifying by telephone from San Diego, Helt had only positive things to say about Howell and Rasmussen, both of whom are accused of failing to act as lookouts. Howell also allegedly permitted Ramos' mistakes go unchecked.

Helt described Howell as someone he would always trust to sit in the front passenger seat, a spot where a boat commander needs a good lookout. As for Rasmussen, who was in the front seat on the evening of the fatal collision, Helt said he had "no doubt" she would have alerted Ramos if she had spotted nearby boats.

In closing arguments, attorneys for Howell and Rasmussen tried to focus the blame on Ramos as the boat driver, and on a purported climate of lax leadership and a casual attitude toward safety and boating standards at the San Diego Coast Guard station.

A military lawyer representing Ramos countered that the deadly crash resulted from a series of choices that seemed reasonable at the time --checking out the fast patrol vessel, rushing to aid the grounded boater.

"Petty Officer Ramos will live with this for the rest of his life," Cmdr. Brian Koshulsky added. "We never said there should not be consequences. But the consequences should not be criminal (convictions)."