At least 16 people were taken to the hospital after two airboats in the Everglades carrying more than 30 people crashed Friday afternoon.
The crash happened around 3:15 p.m. near Ochopee in Collier County, according to reporting from the Miami Herald. One airboat had 20 people on board while the other carried 13 people.
Additional information, including what caused the boats to crash, was not readily available on Monday.
Following a $35 million renovation, La Concha in Key West has recently joined Marriott’s “Autograph Collection,” a signifier of upscale properties within the Marriot International portfolio.
The 160-room hotel, formerly known as Crowne Plaza La Concha, was under construction since at least October of last year and now features a refurbished bar, hotel lobby and restaurant. Included in the renovation were upgrades to the outside of the hotel, rooms, the pool area and meeting spaces.
While the addition of an upscale lodging property is a positive development for Key West’s thriving tourist economy, which welcomes millions of visitors annually, guests should remain cautious.
Divers broke records this year in an annual competition to remove invasive lionfish from Florida waters, according to a Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission press release.
The 2024 Lionfish Season concluded with a record-breaking 31,773 species being pulled from the water. Just under 300 divers went on over 700 trips throughout the state to retrieve the animals that are dangerous to native fish and coral reefs.
One lionfish can reduce a native reef fish population by over 70%. They also present a risk to humans with their venomous spines which can cause painful stings. In 2022, over 25,000 lionfish were removed from Florida waters in FWC’s annual, summer-long challenge, which began in 2016.
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.
An 83-year-old Marathon, Florida, woman retained Leesfield & Partners to represent her after a neighbor’s pet bird attacked her while she folded towels at the community pool.
The woman lives alone in the Marathon community in a two-story condominium and was watching her granddaughter swim in the pool the day of the incident. When she returned to the pool later on to retrieve the beach towels her granddaughter had left, a neighbor came down to the pool area carrying their pet bird whose wings are clipped. As the woman folded the discarded towels, her neighbor put the bird on the fence around the pool near where the woman stood. The bird then reached out and bit the woman on her hand, startling her and causing her to violently fall to the ground. The woman was transported to hospitals a total of three times by ambulance and it was determined she had a broken hip requiring surgery.
Following the bird attack, the woman was left bedridden at the hospital for several weeks and likely has several months of painful recovery and physical therapy still ahead. Due to the incident, the woman “sustained permanent disabling and disfiguring injuries,” according to a lawsuit filed in Circuit Court for the 17th Judicial Circuit in Monroe County.
Key West Injury Lawyer Blog