Monroe County Sheriff Rick Ramsay joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s been going on in the county.
There was an accident this morning in Big Coppitt around the 111 mile marker.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “That area just always gives us a hard time. That Big Coppitt area, so much traffic southbound trying to get to work in Key West and so many roads where people are pulling off of or on to Us 1 and then most of our accidents are somehow distracted driving related. So we always try to warn people to put your phones down, pay attention, but especially that Big Coppitt area, that era plagues us and we have the crashes, even if they’re minor, the traffic backs up so fast. We have traffic backed up for miles quickly, but especially when you have injury related accidents, because we’ve got to stop all traffic to get EMS, police, fire, rescue in, people out on stretchers, and then tow trucks and cleaning the roads. So what people don’t realize, they think it should be easy just to push the car off the road and open the road. There’s just a lot to it, and we have to focus on public safety, injured personnel first. But so this morning, yes, we do have a crash, and we should expect some delays in that area. Be a little cautious coming off the Shark Creek Bridge as you’re coming into the Big Coppitt area and just be patient. It’s just frustrating, but nothing we can do about it.”
The Conch Republic Marine Army is launching their third boat for their organization.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “I love what the Conch Republic Marine Army does. We started that so many years ago with the clean up on land mostly, but also on waters. After Hurricane Irma, they saw a true need and started trying to hometown grow, cleaning up a little bit after the storm and it just kind of morphed into what it is now, a three boat operation, in the Middle Keys, the Lower Keys and the Key West area. They do such a great job, and they’ve got a pretty good marketing ability to try to get volunteers to come out. It’s almost part of your vacation. Come down, go on a boat, do something good. It’s really taken off, to see them get so many constant volunteers, and it’s hard to get volunteers to come out all the time on one boat, let alone volunteers have come out on three and they’ve done a really good job, and try to partnership with marinas and hotels and areas of where they can dock a boat. They can’t afford the docking space, but also access to people and tourists who may want to go out for the day, and then the Winn Dixie providing foods and different stuff, so everyone coming on board is really instrumental. I think that program is so great, obviously, with our cleanups over the years, I’ve donated a couple trucks to the Conch Republican Marine Army so they can haul their debris and garbage out of there, and we were a big supporter of that program for obvious reasons. It’s step by step and step and step in what we do on the land for most part, but our cleanups do with our divers at times as well, and shoreline cleanups. But again, there’s so much trash and garbage everywhere in this world. We just all have to do our part. I think in the Keys we do it better than most in regards to our efforts to clean and pick up, but it’s overwhelming when you hear stories from the captain about how much trap lines or how many refrigerators, or how much poundage of stuff they brought in. A couple weeks ago, we talked about the three cleanups we did in one week, and talked about what we picked up and the amount of stuff we picked up. It’s overwhelming. It’s disgraceful. I hate to see this, but we see this in other areas. And I’ve talked to you before, when I was in Europe to see how bad Europe was with graffiti and trash, and it was overwhelming and surprising, in Paris and Rome, these areas you see on TV, beautiful and scenic, romantic cities, but when you really get there, you’re shocked to see just how dirty, disheveled they are and they’ve given up, and that’s the message we keep saying, is that we can’t give up, and we can’t give in to say this is the norm. Over in there and in other areas, they’ve come to conclusion, this is just the way it has to be, where our stance is different. We say, no, this is not the norm, and we’re not going to let it be the norm, and we’re going to be vigilant.”
A 44 year old Key West Florida woman died after being found unresponsive while snorkeling off Key West on October 9.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “Out snorkeling, having a good day with family and friends and unfortunately, at some point time, she was seen getting further away from the boat, so they tried to call for her to come back to the snorkel boat, thinking she was just sometimes you get caught up in a moment, you get caught up in following a fish or a turtle, and before you know it, you’re pretty far away. So while they called for her, she didn’t respond. But sometimes your head’s under the water, you don’t know if they can hear you. So one of the crew members jumped in and swam to her to try to get her attention, only to find out that she was face down, unresponsive. So at this point on, the crew members brought her back to the boat. They immediately started CPR. They started a 911 progress with a 911 and calling coast guard on the channel 16. And Coast Guard, as always, does a great job. Responded out there with these faster vessels, they can pick up a person, get them in quicker than these snorkel boats are generally pontoon boats, and you’ve got to pick up 40 other people, so it’s generally a better idea for them to coordinate to transfer the patient to the go fast law enforcement boat. We work with our resources on Fire Rescue on land, waiting for the vessel to come in to transfer the patient care over and then ultimately, over to the hospital. And in the end, unfortunately, this young lady did not make it.
Snorkeling and diving can be stressful, a lot of times we see either drowning or heart attacks occur due to stress. People are sometimes a little nervous in the water or exertion. So a sad day, but the number of people that are in our waters, and we say any life is, is too many. But you look at the volume of people that are in and on these waters, and the charters and the divers and snorkels and everything else, and lobstering and the million boats running around it’s a sad part of we have to deal with him. It’s just we hate to see it.”
A 30 year old Stock Island Florida man was arrested last week, for battering a woman, refusing to let her leave his sailboat. He slammed her to the floor, took her cell phone, even zip tied her hands behind her back. But she was rescued.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “She was out with this person who was known to her the night before, and they were drinking, they were at a bar, and at some point in time, they left to go back to his sailboat on Stock Island. And it was consensual at first to go back to the boat. But then at some point in time, she wanted to leave and he wouldn’t let her leave. Then she tried to get her phone to use her phone to get out of there, get help. And he took her phone from her, and it kind of went downhill from there where, eventually, while she was trying to struggle to leave, he got zip ties, and actually zip tied her and wouldn’t let her leave, and at that point in time a consensual relationship or consensual encounter turned into a kidnapping. Once you deprive someone of right to leave or make any type of ability to restrict her free movements, you fall into committing a crime. So this happened at some point in time he felt comfortable enough that she was immobilized, that he could go back to the bar to get another drink. He wanted to get more alcohol, so he left real fast to get alcohol. While he left, a friend of his came over to the boat and came on board looking for his friend, only to find this young lady zip tied, unable to leave. So I’m sure that was a shock for him. He was like, what the? So he immediately untied her or cut the zip ties off. Once he did, she obviously got off the boat as fast as she could, contacted the sheriff’s office. We responded out there. We started an investigation into this matter and determined that her complaint allegations were, in fact, true, the witness verified her being tied up. So we ultimately did arrest this individual for a variety of charges. It was a difficult, sad situation. It could have been a lot worse. Could have a loss of life. These things can turn violent and deadly quickly, but it’s another thing that the sheriff’s office, just goes to show the kind of stuff we have to deal with. And you never know when we get dispatched to a call what it is.”
A man from Christmas Florida was stopped for having a partially obstructed license plate and 65 grams of methamphetamine and various pipes were discovered. He also was wanted out of state for other traffic violations as well.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “Good job by the patrol division. We talk about so much stuff occurs in traffic stops. Everybody has to use a car to commit crimes. We did stop this individual in the Marathon area. We encountered him after traffic violations. We had a canine do a canine sniff, walk around the car. The canine alerted to the presence of narcotics, and this is after we tried to get a driver’s license from the person who had no driver’s license. License was suspended multiple times, so he was being detained for license charges at that time anyway. And then, after the canine alerted, we did search the car. We found about 65.5 grams of methamphetamine, found various smoking pipes inside this truck. This individual had a long history when we ran a criminal history of drug related arrest and also had a long history of traffic related matters, suspended licenses and no licenses and license issues, not only here, but abroad, actually had an out of state warrant for no license and licensing problems there too, as well. So here’s a problem for the person doesn’t have a license, that doesn’t have insurance, so you’re driving an uninsured vehicle down the road, a 5,000 pound missile down the road, and you’re smoking, potentially methamphetamines, and that quantity of methamphetamines is enough weight to be constituted as trafficking in meth, because it’s so much weight that’s more than personal use, that’s someone who’s a user, but also selling and dealing in meth. So a really good job by my officers. We appreciate the partnership of another agency which came out with canine. We’re happy to get drugs off the street. Obviously, happy to get this uninsured, unregistered, unlicensed operator off the street, so we’ve towed his vehicle, seized his drugs. He’s sitting in jail. He won’t be leaving anytime soon, and he won’t be getting that truck back. You have to have a license, insurance and stuff to get the vehicle. So again, you don’t know when you stop somebody just for a tag issue, knowing that they’ve got trafficking level methamphetamine in that car, which makes it a very, very dangerous situation, because they’ve been in and out of the jail. Don’t want to go back to jail. Know if they get caught with that, that they’re probably going to prison, which makes them very much an increased threat to officer safety, for someone for fight or flight theories.”
This is the time of year when a lot of people will be coming into our area.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “It’s been kind of the quiet summer for traffic, but that’s going to end here soon. Fantasy Fest, Christmas not that far down the road, holiday parades. The tourism will start cranking back up. So we’re not too far from getting back to heavy traffic and having to deal with that and we’ve got to be vigilant, be careful, plan ahead.”