Monroe County Sheriff Rick Ramsay joined Good Morning Keys on Keys Talk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s going on in the county.
A recent motorcycle crash resulted in a death.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “This is unusual. A motorist was going down Card Sound Road about the 5.5 mile marker. When he looked and saw he believed a person on the side of the road, he came back and found an unconscious male, extreme injuries, broken bones, bones protruding, visible bones coming out of the legs. These are open, fractured femurs. Called 911 services right away, we got out there and fire rescue and called FHP, we determined that he was deceased. We later on determined that he was riding with a pack of motorcycles that were heading northbound from Monroe back to Dade. He was towards the tail end of the pack, the pack when they got the Dade pulled into a gas station to get fuel before they figured out he wasn’t with them. We found the motorcycle north of the rider on the south guard rail, and it was a large ninja type motorcycle, one of these really fast motorcycles. So unfortunate, single vehicle motorcycle crashed. Appears to be high speed. They lost control trying to keep up with the other riders. Those riders can be very aggressive on the Card Sound Road with the speeds and the passing, and they lost track of him. When you ride with a group of motorcycles, you can’t ride faster or more dangerously than your weakest rider, so you have to know those who are riding with you and not go over their capacities as they attempt to keep up with you. That’s when bad things happen. So a shame, a loss of life for nothing, just high speed on a motorcycle down on Card Sound Road. It’s just a shame.”
Another high speed vehicle crash happened on the water recently. A jet ski at about the 109 mile marker was involved in a crash.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “It’s a little unusual, I guess, a jet ski crashing into people. We see jet skis crashing at the docks, boats and other jet skis. But this is that area 109 mile marker, right by the edge of 18 mile stretch, was now fenced off with some netting, a lot of people back their boats up there on weekends. Hang out there. I don’t know why. It’s right next to a road, and there’s not much. It’s not sand beach. But okay, so this guy is on a jet ski. His wife and daughter are in the shallow water. He’s racing around again, high speed, and he comes in to make a really close pass, I’m presuming, trying to buzz them, spray them with the jet ski. He comes in so fast, so recklessly, that he winds up crashing into his wife, doing an extreme amount of damage, head trauma. We had to land Trauma Star on top of the Jewfish Creek Bridge to air vac her out to Jackson Trauma Center due to severe trauma injury from being struck with a jet ski in the head, face, area, upper torso. So again, we called our friends at FWC, who’s going to do the crash investigation, try to determine if any alcohol is involved. But clearly a reckless operation, trying to show your ass, trying to come in and buzz and spray people, he needs to be in jail when this investigation gets over, I hope so, because his actions resulted in serious bodily injury.”
Three community cleanups with the sheriff’s office netted a huge amount of trash.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “This is really important to me. I call it better, cleaner, safer streets. Better cleaner, safer neighborhoods. Proven fact that cleaner neighborhoods are safer, plus, we all want to look and have a nice paradise clean neighborhoods. So we do this on a regular basis. We have our anti graffiti initiatives. You don’t see graffiti in the county, but we also go out. We have our own landscape truck. We have a couple dump trailers, and my team members are expected to go out and do their part. So last week, we did have three cleanups, one on Thursday in the south end of Marathon around Knights Key. We went out with a group of men and women, and we picked up a large amount of trash. And on Friday, we had two cleanups. One was about the 67 mile marker up by the back gate of NAS Key West. And one was also in Islamorada, about the 84 mile marker thereabouts on the old road, and we filled up our landscape trucks or dump trailers with literally thousands and thousands of trash, garbage, a lot of stuff which will not degrade, your styrofoams and bottles, that stuff we hear in 10,000 years if we don’t get rid of it, a lot of that stuff, birds wind up eating some of that Styrofoam and other animals and it ends up killing them. So we worked really hard to clean our neighborhoods, to pick this stuff up. Great turnouts from the sheriff’s office. The clean up in the south end, I had three officers from FWC show up to help out. In the cleanup in Islamorada, we had four FWC officers join as part of the team. So I always love working with other agencies, citizens, community leaders, to do these cleanups. But this is something that’s been a staple from my regime, from when I took over 13 years ago, and it has not changed, we still focused on community orientated policing, cleaning neighborhoods, quality of life, trying to make sure that paradise remains paradise and remains one of the safest places ever to live, work and play, and we’re going to remain vigilant as long as I’m in command and control of the sheriff’s office, this way of thinking is not going to change.”
A man from Boca Raton barricaded himself in a Conch Key residence over the weekend, and he threatening to kill sheriff’s officers, burglarized the home and resisted arrest.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “I don’t think this is the smartest guy on earth. He was either married or a long term girlfriend, I forget what it was, but he’s no longer with this woman. He was estranged, and this is his ex girlfriend or ex wife’s family’s home in Conch Key. He’s been in rehab. While in rehab, he meets a girl who’s also in rehab. So we’ve got two addicts that get together, which is not healthy generally. They get out, and he decides he’s going to come to the Keys and he’s going to take her to Conch Key, to the ex family’s home without their knowledge or consent. He gets there, and he gets into the home. He apparently is unaware that there’s a video camera system at the house, so the owner of the home, the camera goes off and sees his ex son in law, who is no longer with the family, is estranged from the family, is not supposed to be there. Calls the sheriff up and says, hey, someone just broke into my house, and is in my house, not supposed to be there. So we get there and we contact the male and female. The male is very aggressive, argumentative and combative. We can’t get near him, yelling and screaming, this is his house. Leave now. If we don’t leave now, he’s going to shoot and kill the officers. He’s yelling that he’s going to shoot and kill us. Idle threats, we have to take serious but at the same token we’re not going to leave just because you’re threatening. You’re making the situation worse. You’re just digging the hole deeper. This is not your house. You’re not supposed to be there. You’re making threats to kill police officers. It’s not going to end well. He barricaded himself in the house. We had a little standoff for a little while, and luckily, he was answering the phone when we called. So we did some hostage negotiations via phone. We eventually got him to give up and come out, but he knew we weren’t going away. Once he did, we arrested him for burglary, trespassing, his assaults, his threats. We just can’t tolerate this crap. He’s not from here. This is a 30-something year old male from Boca Raton, who’s just a mess in his whole life, it appears. Glad to get him under arrest and to get him held accountable, maybe get him some help, and hopefully to keep him from coming back down to the Keys and send the message, this is not the place to come down and do your antics, but this is the crap we deal with on a regular basis.”
A shooting in Michigan on Sunday saw the deaths of at least four people while attending church.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “This was a prior Marine Corps vet. This was a Marine Corps vet from ‘04 to ‘08, in Afghanistan, married with a wife and child. All type of people that do crazy stuff. I think the rhetoric is so built up that it’s causing a lot of the problems. I think so much media attention on TV, a lot of copycats, get their ideas from seeing other people do stuff on TV, or news or media, and want to get what they believe is their fame, or whatever it may be, I don’t know. It’s hard to understand. It’s hard to rationalize this type of behavior and say you understand, because if you understand, there’s something wrong with you, but ran his car into a church, setting the church on fire. Had a weapon, had a mass shooting there, killing people there as well, got into a shootout with police. Soon thereafter, police shot and killed him. But we see this copycat, even like with the Kirk shooting, we see the last few shootings that went on, and we see the bullet casings, shell casings marked with rhetoric. We never saw something like that in the past. So one person did it, and what happens within a couple months, you have a couple other shootings where they’re leaving messages on the shell casing, which continues to reinforce the message that the copycats are strong and they’re getting their tactics or what to do, or when they see other people do it, whether it be a school, church, assassination, leave a message on shell casing. Sometimes I think we’re working against ourselves. Sometimes I think it’d be better we never acknowledge the person. Don’t give them any screen time. Don’t acknowledge their name. And give few details about this inside stuff, maybe to mitigate people who think that they’re going to go out in a blaze of glory and their names are going to be everywhere. It’s sad. We’re seeing more and more. Again, it’s the same theme, which means there’s a reason why, because of the same rhetoric that’s being pushed out, and because of the copycats that are seeing these actions that are just emulating what they’re seeing.”