Key West Injury Lawyer Blog
A 9-year-old boy and his father, 47, were identified as the two people killed when a personal watercraft crashed earlier this week into a Marathon, Florida, sea wall.
The two crashed on a 2018 Yamaha personal watercraft just before 7 p.m. in a Boot Key Harbor canal near 15th Street Ocean. The father was thrown over the handlebars of the personal watercraft and catapulted nearly 20 feet away onto land, according to reporting from the Keys Weekly. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
Neighbors rushed to where the boy had landed in the water to try and help until deputies with the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office arrived. The boy was helicoptered out but went into cardiac arrest while on his way to Miami Children’s Hospital. First responders made an emergency landing at Mariners Hospital in Tavernier where he died.
The family had just moved to Marathon about a year ago, neighbors told CBS Miami reporters.
The crash is under investigation by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, according to previous reporting by The Miami Herald, however, the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office was one of the responding agencies on the day of the crash.
Sheriff Rick Ramsay commented to Keys Weekly reporters police do not believe alcohol was involved in the incident.
“It didn’t look like there was any effort to stop, but there are no reports of alcohol, and we don’t believe alcohol was involved, as far as we can tell,” Ramsay said.
Crash Stats on Florida Waters
In an annual report tallying data related to boating and personal watercraft accidents on the water, the FWC reported that personal watercrafts accounted for approximately 17% of the 1,035,911 registered vessels in the state. Of the 659 reportable boating incidents in 2023, personal watercrafts made up about 23%, or 151 of the accidents. About 20 of all personal watercraft crashes took place in Monroe County and 20 took place in Miami-Dade County. About half of all personal watercraft crashes involved a collision with another personal watercraft or a boat, according to the data. There were 115 injuries and 12 deaths resulting from these tragic incidents.
Previous Cases
Leesfield & Partners attorneys see no other recreational watersport activity cause more injury and fatal crashes than jet ski and personal watercraft crashes. Attorneys with the firm have become experts in this practice area of personal injury, securing multi-million dollar settlements for clients and their grieving families at the hands of negligence and recklessness of rental companies targeting tourists and manufacturers that produce these vessels. In the last six years, the firm has secured more than $10 million in verdicts and settlements for injured clients and grieving families who have been hurt or lost a loved one due to a jet ski crash.
The dangers associated with operating these machines include the inability to break suddenly while on the water or the ability to turn or swerve without also increasing speed to subjugate ocean conditions such as choppy waters and currents. With this in mind, it is plain to see why jet skis cause so many devastating crashes into other vessels on the water, bridges, docks and seawalls.
With its office in Key West, a place that has regularly been dubbed the jet ski capital of the world, Leesfield & Partners has seen hundreds of cases involving tragic and permanent injuries to clients and the preventable deaths of their loved ones.
One avoidable death that altered the life of a couple forever resulted from a Key West rental company flouting necessary safety training requirements, as mandated by law. The company failed to ensure that every one of their renters understood the safety tutorial and knew how to operate the personal watercraft that day. A French-speaking renter, who they did not adequately prep, fatally collided with the wife of a Leesfield & Partners client. The company failed to provide their customer with the translation he needed to understand how to drive the jet ski.
Leesfield & Partners attorneys were able to secure a multi-million dollar settlement for the family in that case.
In another jet ski crash, a man visiting from California with his family was seriously injured when he violently crashed into a concrete bridge piling. The man was on a guided jet ski tour with his family at the time. The guides, who are required to prep their customers for the strong currents they would face, led them through a narrow bridge opening and sped far away from them throughout the tour the day the man crashed.
