"Monroe County"

Published on: March 18, 2025

Prosecutors Seek Death Penalty for Florida Keys Man Accused of Sexually Abusing a Minor. How Leesfield & Partners has Protected Children for Decades.

The Monroe County State Attorney’s Office is seeking the death penalty for a Florida Keys man police accused of filming himself raping a child multiple times, according to reporting from the Miami Herald.

Micheal John Demerjian, 36, of Big Pine Key, in the Lower Keys, was in custody on unrelated charges on Jan. 17 when his phone was found by someone who purchased his car. On the phone, over 70 images and videos of the child, who is under 12 years old, were found. The images were reported to the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office.

The Key West Injury Lawyer Blog will not be publishing the age of the child or Demerjian’s connection to the minor to protect their identity.

Published on: March 13, 2025

Boat Captain Found Guilty of Passenger’s Propeller Death in 2020

By Leesfield & Partners

A Marion County diving boat captain was found guilty this week of seaman’s manslaughter in the death of a diver who tragically drowned during a propeller malfunction in March 2020.

A federal jury found Dustin Sean McCabe, 49, of Ocala, Florida, guilty this week on the seaman’s manslaughter charges as well as for lying to the Coast Guard and committing Covid-19 relief fraud, according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida. Seaman’s manslaughter is a second-degree felony in Florida. Mcabe could face up to 10 years in prison for the seaman’s manslaughter charges, up to five years for lying to the coast guard and up to 20 years for the wire fraud.

McCabe is set to be sentenced June 12 before U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon.

Published on: March 6, 2025

Three Hospitalized Following Crash Monday on the Seven Mile Bridge in the Florida Keys

By Leesfield & Partners

Three people were airlifted to the hospital following a head-on crash on the Seven Mile Bridge in the Florida Keys Monday afternoon, according to reporting from local media.

The crash happened around 2 p.m. between a GMC Denali pickup truck and a BMW SUV. Photos from the Miami Herald show the mangled aftermath of the collision and first responders scrambling around the BMW, the front of both vehicles appeared to be crushed in photos.

The pickup was heading south and turned into the northbound lane and struck the BMW, officials with the Florida Highway Patrol told reporters. Officials said they did not know why the truck turned into the northbound lane.

Published on: January 24, 2025

Key West Firefighters Complete Additional Training as Fires Continue to Rage in California. How Leesfield & Partners is Providing Aid.

By Leesfield & Partners

Amid horrific wildfires that have ravaged homes, wreaking havoc on the lives of thousands of Californians, Key West firefighters have completed additional training to improve their emergency response.

Firefighters in Key West recently completed their Florida Urban Search and Rescue Confined Space Technical Rescue training course, a lesson that teaches how to safely and effectively get people out of complicated fire situations. The course focuses on hazard analysis, risk assessment, training levels of personnel and the availability of external resources.

Providing Aid

Published on: December 13, 2024

Here’s How the Federal Aviation Administration Will Pay Homage to a Prominent Leesfield & Partners Client. Who is it?

By Leesfield & Partners

The Federal Aviation Administration Recently announced updated arrival and departure procedures at Florida airports named after Jimmy Buffet, a famed singer-songwriter and previous Leesfield & Partners client who passed away in 2023 at 76.

Pilots arriving at Palm beach International Airport will perform JESTR ONE, the arrival procedure named for Buffet who often compared his work to that of a court jester.

In Key West, where Leesfield & Partners has an office on historic Whitehead Street, pilots leaving from Key West International Airport will go through BUFIT ONE.

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: 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: June 17, 2024

Leesfield & Partners retained in case of 83-year-old woman attacked by neighbor’s pet bird. What happened?

By Leesfield & Partners

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.

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: 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.
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