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.
Leadership Monroe graduated their 33rd class on Saturday.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “I am alumni as well, class 18 of Leadership Monroe. So I encourage anybody to think about putting in for it. It’s a really great experience. Meet some really good current leaders and future leaders. Learn a lot more about the county and how things work. It’s a fun program, interactive, hands on. And so we did have the leadership graduation. Sheriff’s office had two of our staff members in that class, and we try to have one to two people every year in that class. We believe in it so much. Most of my command staff have gone through Leadership Monroe. So I was there on Saturday to support the graduation and see a bunch of prior alumni from leadership, and just have a good day at the Community Park back behind the City Hall in Marathon by the tiki hut. They do a good job. They’ve got docks out there by the water. You can look at the water. You can fish off the docks. They’ve got little docks for kayaks to be launched, a launching ramp. They’ve got the big, large, 5,000 square foot Tiki Hut back there for events or anything else you may want, putting in pickleball courts. So doing really a lot with that property to make it accessible for all types of activities that people may want to do.”
A man from Asheboro, North Carolina, 50 years of age, was swimming at Marvin Key off the Lower Keys, and found unresponsive in the water around 3 in the afternoon recently.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “A terrible day for sure, you’re out there trying to enjoy the weekend down here on vacation. But yes, they went to Marvin Key on a boat. The people report the water was about maybe waist deep at best. An individual appeared from witness account to dive off the boat into the water, and a short time later, they saw him face down, floating, at first, they thought he was just holding his breath, and didn’t think too much about it. After a little more time, he was still floating face down, had not moved, and they figured, okay, something’s wrong. They ran over to him. They turned him over, found out he was non responsive. They called 911, right away, started getting the emergency services rolling. They tried to render first aid. FWC showed up real fast. He was transferred on to an FWC boat who rushed him into shore. Fire Rescue was standing by, and ultimately he was determined to be deceased. We have to wait for a medical exam to determine the cause. It’ll be a death investigation between the sheriff’s office and the medical examiner. Obviously appears to be some type of drowning, but the biggest question is going to be whether he struck his head diving in shallow waters, which is what appears to be at face value. So we’ll have to get that determination from the medical examiners to look for any type of marks, redness, injuries on a face, consistently hitting the bottom first and but end of the day is a sad day for everybody involved.”
Two recent traffic stops found wildlife violations.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “It just continues to show how important our traffic stops are for a lot of reasons, but the 33 mile marker, in the wee hours in the morning, we did stop a car for speeding, found two males in the car who were from out of county who had been fishing, it was clear by fishing rods and coolers and whatnot that they’ve been coming back from a trip of fishing. A special search of their catch did reveal a total of 33 mangrove snapper between two people. You’re allowed five per person. So in this case, here, they were 23 over the legal limits of the catch, of their aggregate bag. So they’re both given notice to appear in court for that violation. This is what destroys the fisheries and leaves nothing for other people or future generations when we over fish. That’s why there’s bag limits in place to make sure the resources exist for current and future populations. So again, a good job by my patrol officer dealing with traffic and fishery violations.”
A Sugar Loaf Key man was arrested on May 2 for causing a scene and tried to resist arrest.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “It’s a 55 year old man who lives in the Sugar Loaf area. For some unknown reason, went to the Sugar Loaf Marina and started engaging with multiple patrons there, arguing, being combative, being nasty. Pushed one person, punched a person, pushed one person into the water. Sheriff’s office was called. He fled. We got on scene. Tried to determine what took place. Tried to identify who he was. We tracked him down to a house on the Boulevard. We tried to make contact with him. We needed to trespass warn him off the property and continue our investigation. He initially had locked himself in the house with the ex girlfriend, and wouldn’t come out. At some point in time, the ex girlfriend came out eventually and said, okay, well, he’s gone. He jumped out the bathroom window. We didn’t believe it. We asked permission to search. She said, sure, he’s gone. You can search. So we searched. We did find him hiding under the bed and he did end up being combative, just a real jerk. So we ultimately did arrest him for a resisting charge. And the ex girlfriend’s lucky she didn’t go to jail. We could have charged her with an obstruction charge as well, lying to us and hiding him, but it’s just really kind of stupid. For what? Nothing. And he took a trip down to Key West to spend more time in my bed and breakfast.”
Pawsitive Beginnings, the Key Largo fox rescue, donated books to the Major Crimes unit recently.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “This young lady started off trying to do a rescue. She had spent some time working at the sheriff’s farm in Key West. It’s where she kind of got her love for animals. Then she moved to the Upper Keys. And then she wanted to start doing some type of rescue for foxes, which are being used for fur, other related stuff. And she has several foxes, a little home up there for them. And then turned it into quasi therapy for kids at the Children’s Shelter, other people who come and spend time with these animals and try to help them to relax. And it turned into a pretty good program she’s done. She’s tried to expand it now with the book, and tries to continue to have the positive experiences through therapy and animals. So she’s really working hard trying to a good thing for the community and trying to help these animals who would have been euthanized. So she did come up with this book. We thought the book was a good book that we could give to young kids who could be victims of bad situations to go through, look, read, help them get through a difficult time in their life. So again, a good job to her. And yes, we always want to partner up with good organizations and good stuff in our communities.”
Dr. Mader, an outstanding veterinarian from our area, is teaming up with the sheriff’s office as well as the Florida Keys SPCA to help instruct the sheriff’s office on safe handling and care of Keys’ wildlife.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “I tell you, if it wasn’t for Dr. Doug, we wouldn’t have an animal farm. The Sheriff’s Office deputies are more and more getting called to alligators and crocodiles and pythons and possums and raccoons and iguanas and you name it. We’re a first responder that’s going to come out to any type of animal incident. We call our friends at FWC if they’re available, but sometimes they’ve got staffing issues, they may not be available. It may be too critical. It may need both agencies to work to deal with a crisis. So I wanted my people to have specialized training of how to deal with these animals, how to try to secure them and protect my officers from getting hurt and protect the animals too as well. You don’t want to go out there with no experience trying to wrangle a nine foot crocodile, but we get called in the backyard or in a pool or whatever it may be, so I’ve asked him to put on some training to give us some basics on this. We’ve offered the training up to our friends at FWC as well. They want to attend. But more and more we are seeing pythons in the north end of Key Largo. More and more alligators up there. We saw that crocodile that struck down there by Boca Chica area. So this is a heavy area for animals that we have to deal with. We deal with manatees, we deal with turtles, whatever it is, if someone calls us, we’re going to respond, and we’re going to try to deal with it, and we need to have the tools in our toolbox for training to make the right decisions for public safety, officer safety and animal safety.”
Charges are pending against a theme park known as Sloth World in central Florida recently because dozens of sloths have perished there under their care.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “I did see that story, and it was horrific, so sad, so senseless, so predictable, thus preventable. Dark, cold warehouse in small, little cages just stacked, which is heartbreaking. These are such beautiful animals, and they’ve got to have some type of licensing to get them in the country and have care, custody, and control. With that, it’s oversight, but somewhere the oversight did not occur. It’s like the Sheriff Office Animal Farm, we have to have special licenses for those animals, and we get inspected. It’s an FDA approved farm, and the same thing at that center up there had to have an FDA license. So somehow it fell through the cracks, and out of something bad, maybe something good will come out of it, that they’ll step up these type of inspections on these smaller organizations that are popping up. But again, it just breaks your heart to see what happened up there.”
There was an interesting case with a jet ski recently.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “It is a 34 year old male from Homestead. About nine o’clock at night, he pulls up behind someone’s house, and the owner sees him on the property wandering around and confronts him, and the guy says that he was part of a jet ski tour and got lost, and had just run out of gas. So the owner of the property just did not buy this story, thought the guy was suspicious and short time later, he noticed the guy was gone. Jet ski was still sitting there. He calls the sheriff’s office, reports a suspicious activity, believing this is a stolen jet ski, gives us a description of the male. As we’re coming into the property, the area, the streets, we see a person who matches the description, who’s riding on the back as a passenger on an e-bike driven by what appears to be a juvenile. We don’t stop it, because we’re going to the house first to figure out what’s going on. When we get there, see the jet ski. We contact the jet ski owner. They say that it must be stolen, because at six o’clock they closed up, all jet skis were accounted for. So it appears this was a stolen jet ski. We then go out, try to look for him. We find the kid, the young man on the e-bike, up around the north end of Marathon. We stopped him. He says he dropped the guy off around that area, and the guy was last seen walking northbound. We started heading northbound, looking for him. At about the 55 mile marker of Grassy Key, we see him walking on the Heritage Trail, officers put the lights on, turn around, as they do, the guy runs and jumps into the mangroves, and we have to set up a perimeter. Sometime later, we do find him, pull him out, the witness comes up, identifies him as the person who showed up on the stolen jet ski. We arrested him for grand theft at the jet ski. In the meantime, we had like three other burglaries that we were investigating that just took place that day. For a jet ski, a jet ski trailer, a stolen, recovered Kubota side by side RTV from Dade County. So we initially arrested him for the jet ski theft, and we continued the investigation. Next couple days, we’re able to tie him into three more burglaries where he stole one jet ski on a trailer and then abandoned it. Stole two other jet skis on a trailer, abandoned up around the 70 something mile marker, and we recovered the Kubota for Dade County. So this was a career criminal who had a long, long, long, extensive criminal history of burglaries and thefts. So we’re glad we’re able to arrest him, get all that property back to all the rightful owners in Monroe and Dade, and hold him accountable and with his criminal history and these charges, hope he’ll go back to prison.”