15-year-old Florida girl’s wakeboarding death opens lid on state’s lax lagoon laws
Miami-Dade Commissioner Raquel Regalado is seeking harsher penalties for boaters in hit-and-run accidents after Ella Adler’s death earlier in May
Christina Coulter By Christina Coulter Fox News.
The death of 15-year-old ballerina Ella Riley Adler, who was struck and killed by an oncoming vessel after she lost hold of a tow-rope while wakeboarding in Florida last week, has brought the disparity in punishments between hit-and-run incidents on the road and at sea to light.
Last week, Carlos Guillermo Alonso, 78, owner of the 42-foot Boston Whaler, hit the teen on the afternoon of May 11 near Key Biscayne, according to an incident report provided by Fox News Digital by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
Adler and another teen had been wakeboarding — a water sport similar to waterskiing, but involving a single board strapped to the feet — behind another 42-foot boat with 11 occupants onboard. Both youths lost grip of their tow-ropes at different times, the agency said, and their boat was circling around to retrieve them from the water when solo-boater Alonso hit Adler and jetted away without stopping.
It is unclear whether Alonso was speeding or flouting regulations — his attorney, Lauren Field Krasnoff, said her client was an experienced boater of 50 years that did not drink. However, a box indicating whether alcohol was involved in the crash is marked “unknown” on the agency’s report.
FLORIDA OWNER OF BOAT ‘OF INTEREST’ IN TEEN BALLERINA’S DEATH IDENTIFIED, AS MORE DETAILS OF THE COLLISION EMERGE
Ella Riley Adler, 15, was killed during the May 11 incident in Biscayne Bay. (Provided by Adler family )
“If his boat was involved, I can tell you he had absolutely no idea that that is what happened that day. He is as devastated as anybody could be,” she told.
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