Car Accidents

Published on: December 18, 2024

Tractor-Trailer Driver Allegedly on social media Before Fatal Crash that killed woman, 8-year-old son.

A tractor-trailer driver who faces felony charges in the August 2023 crash in Nebraska that killed a woman and her young son, 8, is now being accused of using Snapchat as he crashed, according to reporting from the Miami Herald.

Justin Zoerb, 22, was charged with two counts of motor vehicle homicide and one count of reckless driving following the Clay County, Nebraska, crash on Aug. 9, 2023.

The crash happened around 4 p.m., killing 8-year-old Ryker Schlichtman and Nicole Pavelka, 30. Three other children in the family were hospitalized for their injuries but lived.

Published on: November 1, 2024

Key West Man Gets Three Felony Charges For Pointing This Device at Police. What to Know.

By Leesfield & Partners

A Key West man was charged this week with three felonies and other misdemeanors after police say he pointed gloves with lasers into their car, almost causing an accident.

John Maximilian Zahner, 40, was charged with three felony charges of misusing a laser device, resisting arrest without violence and misdemeanor charges of providing a false identity to law enforcement, according to local media.

The strange events unfolded Monday around 2:15 a.m. when Zahner allegedly began shining the lasers from his gloves into the patrol vehicles of at least three officers who were driving on Duval Street. The lasers were so bright that one officer reported experiencing temporary blurry vision and nearly hitting the patrol car in front of him. The officers saw Zahner standing in front of Bourbon Street Pub and turned their vehicles around but say he ran back into the bar, according to reporting from news outlets.

Published on: August 13, 2024

Florida student hospitalized after mom hits her with car during school drop-off. What to know about start of school traffic safety

By Leesfield & Partners

The first day of school drop-off lines can be particularly hectic with friends waving to one another after months away and frustrating traffic jams but, for one Florida family, the new school year’s drop-off turned tragic when a mother accidentally hit her child with her car.

The incident happened before 8 a.m. Monday during school drop-off when the Sarasota middle schooler was attempting to retrieve school supplies that had fallen underneath the car. The child crawled under the SUV to pick up the pens and markers. The mother, who told police she did not see the girl, hit her.

The girl was airlifted to a hospital in St. Petersburg in critical condition. There was no update on the child’s condition as of Tuesday.

Published on: June 18, 2024

Leesfield & Partners secures almost half a million in settlements for Monroe County clients

By Leesfield & Partners

Leesfield & Partners proudly announces that the firm has secured $460,000 in combined settlements for two clients injured in separate Monroe County incidents.

The first of the two cases, both handled by Leesfield & Partners Trial Lawyer, Evan Robinson, took place in February of 2022 and resulted in serious injury to the client. The case was able to be settled with a $10,000 award for bodily injury and $100,000 in uninsured motorist policy coverage.

Uninsured motorist policies exist to protect injured drivers if the at-fault driver does not have coverage or cannot be identified, like in cases of a hit-and-run. This policy differs from under-insured motorist coverage which protects the injured driver if the at-fault driver’s policy cannot cover the full extent of the damages.

Published on: May 28, 2024

Driver allegedly asleep at the wheel crashes into two marathon runners in Key West weekend race.

By Leesfield & Partners

Two pedestrians running in a weekend race on U.S. 1 near mile marker 17 in Key West were hospitalized after being hit by a car whose driver had allegedly fallen asleep at the wheel.

The driver, 23, was heading north when officials say she fell asleep at the wheel, eventually hitting two men identified by NBC 6 South Florida as a surgeon named “Matt D.,” and a University of Miami professor named “Gabriel.” The two men were hit around 2 p.m. Saturday, May 18, and were participating in the Keys 100, a 100-mile point-to-point race to benefit The Cancer Foundation of the Florida Keys Inc, which offers various services to cancer patients in the Keys who have to be shuttled to and from Miami for treatment. As the driver fell asleep, her car went out of her lane to the right, hitting the first runner and then the second before stopping on the road’s right shoulder.

The wife of Matt D. said in an interview with NBC 6 that part of her husband’s right arm had to be amputated and he remains in the hospital at Jackson Memorial Hospital’s Ryder Trauma Center for treatment. The wife of Gabriel, the other runner injured in the crash, said that doctors expect him to lose some function in his right arm. Both wives claim their husbands to be experienced runners with Gabriel’s wife adding that safety measures like cones and signs to tell drivers that there are runners in the area were missing. Keys 100 officials said in the article that the Seven Mile Bridge is coned, but not other parts of the course and “it [the entire course] never has been [completely coned off.]”

Published on: June 9, 2023

Over $1.2 million secured in back to back Key West settlements

By Leesfield & Partners

In the Courtroom

Partner Justin Shapiro represented a family visiting Key West from California that was involved in a jet ski incident and the firm represented the family of a Monroe County Sheriff’s Deputy injured in a motor vehicle accident.

Unparalleled Experience and Success Representing Victims of Jet Ski Incidents

Published on: May 14, 2013

Head-on collision in Islamorada kills one and leaves two seriously injured

By Leesfield & Partners

As just discussed in our most recent post “Settlement reached in Florida Keys seven mile bridge fatal car accident” head-on crashes in the Florida Keys is all too common. Yesterday, 22-year-old Kristine Rivera was killed when the vehicle she was in, operated by Didier Miles, 24, slammed head-on into a taxi that was stopped on Overseas Highway, waiting to make a turn.

Head-on collision.jpg

Islamorada Fire-Rescue firefighters wheel Didier Miles to an ambulance Monday evening. (Photo taken by David Goodhue- Courtesy of KeysNet.com)

Details of the accident have yet to be released to the public, however it is likely that speeding and/or distraction may have been the cause for the umpteenth time. A witness came forward and said to a Miami Herald reporter that Kristine Rivera, the now deceased woman, rear-ended his vehicle approximately 4 miles south of where the fatal accident occurred.

Published on: February 14, 2013

Lawsuit filed in Key West following rear-end car accident

By Leesfield & Partners

It almost invariably happens the same way for many people who travel the roads of Monroe County, and Key West in particular. You are driving on Flagler Avenue, or Truman Avenue, or North Roosevelt Boulevard, when, out of nowhere, a distracted driver crashes into your car.

Invariably, the at-fault driver who caused the accident will exit his vehicle and offer an apology while asking if you and everyone in your car is ok. An officer from the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office will respond to the scene, listen to all parties involved and will issue a citation to the negligent driver. If you are hurt in the incident, the severity of your injuries will dictate how your personal injury claim will be handled. The magnitude of your injuries is the only variable in this scenario.

A victim of a traffic accident caused by a third-party in Florida has one out of four chances the negligent driver does not have insurance (nearly 24 percent of all drivers in Florida don’t have insurance, according to the nonprofit Insurance Research Council.)

Published on: December 12, 2012

Two injured in latest catastrophic accident in the Florida Keys

By Leesfield & Partners

On December 11, 2012, a car accident in Saddlebunch Keys saw one person transported to a local hospital and another airlifted emergently to Miami. The Sheriff’s Office has yet to provide the names of the victims or how the multiple vehicle accident occurred shortly before 5pm.

This is the latest major motor vehicle accident with injuries in the Florida Keys. Monroe County has a long history of injuries and deaths caused by car accidents, most of which happen on the highway leading into Monroe County from the mainland. Overseas Highway is the single way in and single way out of the County. In 2010, the National Traffic Highway Safety Administration (NTHSA) recorded 21 fatalities due to motor vehicle crashes in Monroe County, and 3 fatalities involving bicyclists.

The reason for such a sad record can be attributed to multiple factors. One is the road itself. The highway presents unique and dangerous conditions due to the high volume of visitor traffic on a single highway, and the close proximity of county residential areas. On top of that, the road consists of a series of bridges connecting islands, narrow in many places, and offers many distractions. The main reason listed by the local authorities and the NHTSA is the binge alcohol consumption associated with vacationing contributes greatly to high fatalities and accident rates.

The NHTSA recently published that in 2010, among the many factors most influencing fatal crashes in Monroe County, alcohol consumption and alcohol-impaired drivers amounted to a whooping 22% of all fatal crashes.

To put these numbers into perspective, Florida CHARTS compared alcohol-related fatal crashes in Monroe County with the rest of the State of Florida (per 100,000 persons). The verdict is clear and troubling. In 2001, Monroe County had a death rate twice as high as the rest of the State (12.6 to 6.1). In 2010, while the State’s rate decreased to 4.2, Monroe County’s death rate grew to a monumental 19.2. In other words, Monroe County has a death rate 5 times higher than the rest of the State of Florida when it comes to alcohol-related fatal accidents.
Continue reading

Published on: October 29, 2012

Key West’s Fantasy Fest coming to a close with a rash of traffic accidents

By Leesfield & Partners

Yesterday, the annual Fantasy Fest was drawing to a close, but countless visitors and locals will not forget several terrible accidents which caused Overseas Highway to be shutdown for several hours by police.

Monroe County Sheriff’s Deputy Becky Herrin told the Sun-Sentinel that they “expect heavy traffic, possibly with a bottleneck in Islamorada that sometimes stretches to the Long Key Bridge. Our roads can only hold so many cars. And Fantasy Fest pretty much maxes out our traffic.”

During the last weekend of the festivities in Key West, Florida Highway Patrol and numerous Sheriff’s Deputies responded to more than 21 motor vehicle accidents. One of them involved the collision of a motorcycle with another car at mile marker 29.5 in Big Pine Key. One of the two people on the motorcycle was severely injured and rushed to Fishermen’s Hospital in Marathon where he was pronounced dead. The second occupant was flown to Miami by helicopter for further medical treatment.

Several hours earlier, two vehicles collided at mile marker 41 on the seven-mile bridge, which required the emergency rescue and transport to three people to Fishermen’s Hospital.

Over the years, the road to and from Key West has seen thousands of car accidents, with many resulting in fatalities. The causes for these crashes are often times attributed to speeding, alcohol, or texting. A study has revealed that between 2006 and 2010, Monroe County averaged 1,329 car accidents every year. Also, in the last 34 years, ending in 2009, the number of fatal car accidents throughout the county of Monroe was drastically higher than the average for the rest of the state of Florida. In the past ten years, there have been more than 220 fatal accidents in Monroe County.

Leesfield & Partners have established their offices in Key West over three decades ago and have been a staple in the personal injury landscape in Key West and throughout the Florida Keys.
Continue reading