Monroe County Sheriff Rick Ramsay joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s going on in the county.
An accident occurred earlier this morning in Islamorada with a vehicle and a bicyclist.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “Around almost seven-ish, we had a sad car crash, a vehicle versus a bicyclist. We had a homeless individual, a homeless male on a bike, which pulled out right in front of a truck. The truck was going northbound, and said the bike came out of nowhere and just right in front of his path, and it was like about a 63 year old male on a bicycle who pulled in front of the truck, the vehicle that hit him struck, stopped right away, called, rendered aid, Fire Rescue responded rapidly, but they were unable to save the life of this individual who crossed in the path of a vehicle. So that requires FHP to bring what’s called a traffic homicide investigator in from Miami Dade County, and we treat the crash scene like a crime scene, just in case there’s any potential criminal charges that may arise out of it. With that, it causes us to have to shut down basically north and south lanes, and we have to try to defer traffic to shoulders. So it does require lane shift during this time for about an hour.”
A 14-year-old from Big Coppitt Key was arrested recently.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “This young man is 14 years old. We did name him, which we don’t usually name minors, but we always say sometime when minors commit felony charges or continue to commit crimes at some point in time, we think that other parents have a right to know who this child is, to determine whether they want this child coming to visit their kids or their house. They want their kids hanging out with this kid or this kid’s a bad influence, and may get their own kids into mischief of trouble, but this child has already been arrested in and was already under house arrest by the department of juvenile justice with severe restrictions. In the wee hours a morning he left the house, violated the Department of Juvenile Justice orders on house arrest, stole his mother’s car and was joy riding around. We stopped him on a traffic charge for running two stop signs and failure to maintain a single lane, I believe. He stopped initially. As soon as we walked up to the car, he took off. So we jumped back in our car, we started a pursuit. He’s from the Big Coppitt are and the pursuit is going on between different streets and roads and back neighborhoods and we’re doing 50 miles an hour in a back neighborhood. So this is really high speed at this point in time, based on residential neighborhoods and dangerous. He’s at times driving in a bike path off the road, on the shoulders, really, in a dangerous manner. We eventually did catch him and stop him and arrest him as he pulled into a driveway and tried to hide in a car. So we did arrest him, when we tried to arrest him, he started resisting us. So this is just a 14 year old kid who’s in and out of the judicial system who, while on house arrest, is doing this garbage, is fighting with the police, is going to hurt and kill somebody. Again, no drivers license. He’s only 14. So we did identify him again, because we think at some point in time, the public interest outweighs the privacy of a minor in this case here. So we’re glad to get him off the streets. Hope DJJ and the courts can do something with this young man, because he’s right now on a definite path to Nowheresville, USA if he keeps it up.”
A 41 year old marathon man was arrested on Thursday and was hitting a pregnant woman.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “He’s been involved with the sheriff’s office for year, always been in trouble. This is his on/off girlfriend who’s about nine months pregnant with his baby, and a domestic situation took place, which turned physical with him not letting her leave the residence, not letting her call 911, striking in her head, kept her for a period of time before she was able to leave and get medical attention. We met her at the hospital. We got her version of events. We saw signs of violence, a knot to her head. We went back to try to talk to him, who would then had temporarily barricaded himself in house, refused to come out, wouldn’t comply with lawful commands. So it turned into a short standoff before he eventually came back out, and we did arrest him on multiple charges here, but it’s just sad sometimes people can’t break this cycle, and this is an ongoing matter with this young man and this young lady who are on and off, on and off. But these aggressors generally don’t stop their aggression. In fact, they generally get more violent, especially here we’re dealing with a nine month pregnant young lady, this is a really dangerous for her and for the baby as well. So this is just not the smartest young man, making poor decisions in his life, but majority of his life I’ve known him has been filled with poor decisions and that’s job security for the sheriff’s office. We will protect our citizens at all costs.”
Recently, some people from Miami were arrested on drug charges.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “This is a 19 and 18 year old males from the Hialeah Miami area down in the Keys about 2:30 in the morning. We stopped them for traffic violations. As we approach the car and the window rolls down, there’s a strong odor of marijuana rolling out the car. Nobody’s got met up marijuana cards, which gives us a right to search. At which point in time we do find a felony amount for marijuana drug paraphernalia. We find a loaded nine millimeter handgun inside the car. Ultimately, we do arrest both individuals for weapons and drug charges, but it still becomes a scary why they’re down here in the wee hours of morning from Miami and think they have to have a loaded gun while there’s drugs in the car. These are very young adults, who are up to no good, and we keep trying to send a message about coming to the Keys and that they’re going to be more likely to be arrested here, more likely to be going to longer term in jail, more likely to be prosecuted. We’re just not going to tolerate this. We want people to come down and visit and enjoy. We want people to come down in a lawful manner and not endanger safety, well being over citizens and visitors and that’s what the two individuals were up to, and we put a stop to it, and they’re where they need to be. In my jail.”
A 15-year-old from Homestead was involved in a shooting recently.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “This is very serious, a 15 year old male from Miami Dade County came down to Key Largo Park, apparently knows some of the kids here in that area, and got into an argument over a girl with a Key Largo juvenile. In the course of this argument, he had a weapon in his possession, a nine millimeter and he brandished the weapon and ultimately discharged the weapon at the other juvenile, striking him in the hand, doing minor damage. It was kind of a grazing blow, and then the second round struck a cargo pants pocket inside that was his cell phone, hit the cell phone, his cell phone exploded, putting small little amounts of metal on the inside of each leg. Ultimately, he was flown out to Miami for his injury. Had some minor surgery. But the victim in this case was not cooperative, nor were the witnesses which made this case really difficult. Suspect had fled the scene, and the other parties involved did not want to help us. We pulled out major crime units on this. We canvassed the crime scene, collected whatever evidence we could. The next day, we sent out police divers close to where the suspect fled, in the canal area. We were hoping to find the weapon, that what we wanted to get the most, but we did not find the weapon. But we did find the clothing that the suspect was wearing. It was a black hoodie type outfit, a ski mask, and the suspect threw them in the canal right away. In such a haste to get rid of them, he actually inside the pocket of the jacket we located his wallet with his ID and money. He just ditched it all real fast. So we had his wallet, ID, the clothing, so we identified him pretty quickly, got a warrant for his arrest within a day or two, then we were able to contact his parents, and they contacted an attorney, ultimately agreed to surrender himself, surrendered himself to the jail in Plantation Key. I did release his name and picture of this 15 year old male. Again, sometimes I think our citizens, parents need to know who these bad people are, who are carrying a gun, who are shooting, discharging a weapon, and doing this. So we did release his name and picture so parents can make educated decisions, whether they think this young man should be hanging out with their kids or not, dating their daughters or not, or being at their house or not. So it’s not designed to out them, but their privacy is the lowest priority I have when it comes to public safety.”
A theft of $3,500 worth of fishing rods happened in Key Largo at the Ocean Reef Club last week.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “The suspect, in this case, identified on multiple cameras. Got a call from the victim saying they went to go fishing, and the fishing rods and everything were all missing. So it was kind of a little bit delayed. It was a week or two delayed before he’d seen them. So it caused us to have to do a investigation, to try to pull cameras and do a canvas and try to figure this out. We did come across several camera images depicting the suspect and even depicting the crime in progress. The suspect’s a 61 year old male from North Key Largo who did take these rods and reels, and I’m not exactly sure why, but why is it irrelevant. So we did identify him, and we did charge him with the grand theft and other charges. We recovered most of the property. I think most stuff all, but I think maybe one rod and reel was recovered back to the owner in this case here. But this continues to show we’re busy, but we are vigilant, and we don’t just report it, we try to be vigilant, to investigate and solve and hold people accountable. We want to get restitution. We want to get closure for the victims, but we also want to send messages to others who think they’re going to commit crimes, and we want to try to get the people committing crimes to stop crime sprees. If we let them continue to do this without being held accountable, they’re more emboldened to continue to steal stuff. This sends a message that maybe this is not the smartest thing to do.”
There is some construction in the Upper Keys with the aqueduct authority repairs.
Sheriff Ramsay said, “We know what a catastrophe that was when it first started out. We work with FDOT and the Florida Keys Aqueduct Authority to try to mitigate this issue for our citizens and visitors. We reminded people that this was not the sheriff’s office operation. There were a lot of people mad at us. We said we had nothing to do with the planning of this operation that took place, but when it became so bad, we did get involved to try to stop until we could get better plans. I think right now, we’ve seen a big change in what’s called MOT, the Management of Traffic plan. We are still going to see backlogs, but nothing like we were seeing. We were seeing two hour delays, sitting in traffic for two hours. Now, there is a delay. Traffic is moving slower, but we don’t have a lane shift anymore. We made some changes that will keep both southbound lanes open and one northbound. Before there was a total northbound block, lane shift, one southbound lane only, which was disastrous, and causing a lot of our problems. Then the other problem is that, because traffic was so backed up, most people have traffic phone apps that are telling people to take the old road to avoid the traffic on US 1 and when they take the old road, well, they eventually have to get back on US 1 and when they’re all trying to get back on US 1, they’re either forcing their way back into the traffic, pulling in front of the car, or every fifth car on US 1 is stopping to let a car in. That’s what’s causing the biggest backlog, more than the traffic zone itself, is that the traffic is leaving US 1, catching the old road and then trying to re enter US 1. That’s where we’re getting the biggest backlog and there’s no easy answer how to say that. People say shut the old road down. Well, the old road, you’ve got thousands of residents back there who have to get to and from their property, deliveries come back there for a couple miles worth of businesses, you’d have to have checkpoints set up to determine if someone does or doesn’t live there. It would be very manpower intensive and it’s not just two points of ingress, egress. As you go, almost every business has an entrance from US 1 to the old road. There’s probably literally close to 100 points that you could get to and from US 1 to the old road. Several citizens called and said we needed to shut down the old road and let it be for residents only. But it sounds easier than it really is. It’s impossible. I’d need 100 officers and that’s just going for three months. It just is not that easy. This is a very difficult, challenging thing that we have to have a new water pipeline, but we have to have it so we can still keep businesses open, traffic flowing and have the least amount of impact on the general public, which we’re doing our part to try to make that the best it can be. But people call me on saying, you have to do something. What am I going to do? We can only make traffic go so fast and at the end of the day, this is a state highway under the control of the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicle and FHP. The sheriff’s office doesn’t control the road, while we have authority, but the responsibility for the flow and movement, management of the traffic plan is the owner the highway, which is the Florida Department of Transportation, Department Highway Safety and Motor Vehicle and the enforcement aspect for that is FHP, whose job is to keep the traffic flowing and moving. This is one of the most difficult areas where they’re working, and it’s in the middle of season, in the middle of spring break, in front of the high school. So I think the timing of the location is probably off. That would have been probably better for the summer when schools are closed and things a little bit slower to do that geographic area, but it doesn’t matter. It is what it is. We did get the permit yanked so we could resolve this or try to mitigate it. So a lot of people were happy about that, but they were unhappy when they started back up and there were still backups, but nothing like they were.”