At least four people were rescued from a sinking boat off the coast of Marathon, Florida, Sunday.
Th incident happened about 11 miles off the coast around 5 p.m. when a distress signal reached the U.S. Coast Guard. A crew was sent out to find the 27-foot, sinking vessel and its four passengers.
Additional information including what caused the boat to sink or whether anyone was injured were not immediately available Monday.
A father who was allegedly driving drunk the day he crashed his car into a tree, killing his daughter, 5, and injuring his son, 3, faces DUI manslaughter charges, police said in a Dec. 31 news release.
The crash happened in Polk County, Florida, on Nov. 7 when a father, who is not being named to protect the identity of his son, was allegedly three times over the legal limit when he was behind the wheel. The man picked up his children from their grandfather’s home, missed a turn and ran a stop sign, according to police. He later crashed into a tree and the car went up in flames. The man’s daughter died in the incident and his 3-year-old son suffered burns to his face.
The man tried getting his son out of the car but fell to the ground. A passerby helped the child. The father was also injured in the crash, according to reporting from the Miami Herald.
Several bills, including one to impose stricter penalties on boaters involved in crashes, have been proposed in the Florida House and Senate ahead of the 2025 start to the legislative session in March; here’s what you should know.
The bill referencing the penalties was proposed by Sen. Ileana Garcia, a Republican in Miami, and would classify fleeing a fatal boat crash as a first-degree felony, meaning this charge could carry a sentence of up to 30 years in prison, if convicted. Additional penalties can include a $10,000 fine. If a person who is found guilty of this crime was also found to have bene under the influence at the time of the crash, then a mandatory, minimum sentence of four years would be applied.
This bill, SB 58, was filed in response to the 2022 Biscayne Bay boat crash that killed one high school student on board and permanently injured another. The student killed in that incident was 17-year-old Luciana Fernandez who was on the boat being operated by George Pino, a local real-estate developer. Pino was first charged with three misdemeanor charges of careless boating, but those charges were changed to vessel homicide after a witness came forward this year with new evidence in the case.
A woman killed as the result of a tragic Nov. 7 boat crash in Key West has been identified by authorities as a 28-year-old Hialeah woman.
Stephanie Rodriguez, the woman killed in the incident, was among several people who were ejected into the water after the driver of a 39-foot Deep Impact, four-engine vessel made a sharp right turn as it traveled through the Calda Channel north of Key West. The passengers were rushed to the hospital for treatment and Rodriguez died from her injuries.
That day, over 100 boats were in the area participating in the Key West Poker Run, a 32-year tradition of racing on the water put on by the Florida Powerboat Club. The operator of the vessel involved in the crash is a member of the Florida Powerboat Club and was participating in the annual run from Miami to Key West this week to celebrate the Race World Offshore World Championship speedboat races, according to reporting from The Miami Herald.
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.
A 5-year-old boy died Thursday night after drowning in the backyard pool of a home in Miami-Dade County, according to reporting from The Miami Herald.
Emergency responders were called out to the home, located on the 14800 block of SW 168th Terrace, just before 8 p.m. Thursday. The boy was taken to HCA Florida Kendall Hospital for emergency treatment but was pronounced dead at the hospital.
Additional details were not immediately available Friday. The incident is under investigation by the Miami-Dade Homicide Detectives.
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