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Condolences and wishes for a speedy recovery for those injured. A 42' flipping over backwards at 70 seems odd.
Speed boat crash kills 1 near Gulf Breeze
4 others in hospital with severe injuries
One boater was killed and four more were badly injured in a high-speed accident in the Santa Rosa Sound on Saturday afternoon, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission said.
A 42-foot speedboat carrying five people was traveling at high speed in the waters south of Shoreline Park in Gulf Breeze at about 2:30 p.m. when it hit a wave and went airborne, Lt. Douglas Berryman of the Fish and Wildlife Commission said. The boat shattered into pieces upon landing.
One person was killed and four others were taken to a hospital for treatment. Berryman said the identities of the people and the cause of the wreck still were being investigated.
“Every person involved is in pretty bad shape,” he said. “It’s gonna take us a while to put it all together.”
Members of the Gulf Breeze Police Department, the Coast Guard and Gulf Breeze Fire and Rescue responded to the wreck.
A somber crowd of onlookers watched from the boardwalk as crews ferried bits of the vessel from the crash site to the shore.
“Half of the boat is underwater, half of it is above water and we’ve got hundreds and hundreds of pieces that we’re picking up,” Berryman said.
He said the amount of debris indicated the boat was traveling very fast at the time of the crash. “You can look at that and tell it was high speed,” he said, pointing to the wreckage. “How fast, I have no idea.”
By about 5 p.m. workers had accumulated and cordoned off two large piles of debris on the shore. Berryman said a dive crew had been contacted to retrieve the submerged sections of the boat. Information about the registration of the boat — said to be a cigarette or go-fast boat popularized in the 1980s television series “Miami Vice” — and its owners was unavailable Saturday evening.
A rotating crowd of onlookers quietly watched the grim work proceedings and offered their well wishes to the boaters as well as their thoughts about what happened. Bobby Thomas said he was walking his dog toward the park when emergency vehicles began to streak past him. He arrived at Shoreline Park just after the crash and said that witnesses described it to him. “They didn’t hit anybody. He was just going fast,” Thomas said witnesses told him. “They said he must have been going about 70 mph, then the boat just flipped over backwards.”
Berryman said it probably will be well into next week before the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission had definitive answers to report. “It’s Easter weekend,” he said. “Nothing’s going to happen fast.”
http://www.pnj.com/article/20130331...ls-1-near-Gulf-Breeze?gcheck=1&nclick_check=1
Speed boat crash kills 1 near Gulf Breeze
4 others in hospital with severe injuries
One boater was killed and four more were badly injured in a high-speed accident in the Santa Rosa Sound on Saturday afternoon, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission said.
A 42-foot speedboat carrying five people was traveling at high speed in the waters south of Shoreline Park in Gulf Breeze at about 2:30 p.m. when it hit a wave and went airborne, Lt. Douglas Berryman of the Fish and Wildlife Commission said. The boat shattered into pieces upon landing.
One person was killed and four others were taken to a hospital for treatment. Berryman said the identities of the people and the cause of the wreck still were being investigated.
“Every person involved is in pretty bad shape,” he said. “It’s gonna take us a while to put it all together.”
Members of the Gulf Breeze Police Department, the Coast Guard and Gulf Breeze Fire and Rescue responded to the wreck.
A somber crowd of onlookers watched from the boardwalk as crews ferried bits of the vessel from the crash site to the shore.
“Half of the boat is underwater, half of it is above water and we’ve got hundreds and hundreds of pieces that we’re picking up,” Berryman said.
He said the amount of debris indicated the boat was traveling very fast at the time of the crash. “You can look at that and tell it was high speed,” he said, pointing to the wreckage. “How fast, I have no idea.”
By about 5 p.m. workers had accumulated and cordoned off two large piles of debris on the shore. Berryman said a dive crew had been contacted to retrieve the submerged sections of the boat. Information about the registration of the boat — said to be a cigarette or go-fast boat popularized in the 1980s television series “Miami Vice” — and its owners was unavailable Saturday evening.
A rotating crowd of onlookers quietly watched the grim work proceedings and offered their well wishes to the boaters as well as their thoughts about what happened. Bobby Thomas said he was walking his dog toward the park when emergency vehicles began to streak past him. He arrived at Shoreline Park just after the crash and said that witnesses described it to him. “They didn’t hit anybody. He was just going fast,” Thomas said witnesses told him. “They said he must have been going about 70 mph, then the boat just flipped over backwards.”
Berryman said it probably will be well into next week before the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission had definitive answers to report. “It’s Easter weekend,” he said. “Nothing’s going to happen fast.”
http://www.pnj.com/article/20130331...ls-1-near-Gulf-Breeze?gcheck=1&nclick_check=1
