In the summer, a charter fishing boat captain in the Florida Keys crashed his boat into a bridge while drunk on tequila and high on drugs. Several of his clients, including an 11-year-old boy, were badly hurt.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, which is part of the state police and looks into boat accidents, says that 42-year-old Laurence Lewis slammed his 35-foot Seahunter center console into the South Pine Channel Bridge in the Lower Keys at 37 mph around 1:30 a.m. on July 8.
According to the warrant made by FWC Investigator Joshua Peters on January 13, all eight people on board, including Lewis, were either thrown from the boat or got stuck under pieces of the wrecked ship. And most of them, including Lewis, were badly hurt.
At the time, graphic video from firefighters’ body cameras showed them lifting Lewis off the boat while his leg was barely attached. The story says the 11-year-old boy broke his leg and had a brain bleed. A woman in the car also hurt her leg. Four people on board were hurt, Peters wrote. One broke his foot, another got bruised ribs, and a third got both.
When deputies and rescuers from the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office arrived at the scene, they saw beer cans and a half-empty tequila bottle floating away from the boat. This made investigators think right away that alcohol played a role in the crash.
Peter’s report says that FWC investigators also found a Costa sunglasses case with needles, a syringe, a spoon, cotton balls, and a synthetic opioid pill that is given to people who are trying to quit opiate addiction.
Lewis was hurt so badly that morning that he had to get medical help right away. He was taken to Jackson South Medical Center in Miami-Dade County. This meant that police couldn’t draw blood right away to check for drug and alcohol use.
A blood test done at the hospital at 6 a.m., on the other hand, showed that Lewis had a blood alcohol level of.05. According to state law, being.08 is too high to drive a car or boat. Reports say that people on the boat said they saw him drink his last drink, which was a mix of tequila and margaritas, just before 1 a.m.
Investigators think that his BAC level at the time of the accident was between.08 and.12, Peters writes in his report.
The report also says that at 4 a.m. that same day, his blood was checked by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and found to contain both amphetamine and methamphetamine.
When Investigator Glen Way talked to Lewis after the crash, Peter’s report says that Lewis said he had a prescription for the synthetic opioid pill and had shot it into a vein hours before going fishing.
Blood tests did not show that drug, but Peters wrote in his report that Lewis’ prescription did not say to give the drug intravenously.
The FWC says that the people on the boat that day were from Live Oak, Lake City, and Big Pine Key, Florida. Presley Bean, 39, from Live Oak, was one of the guests who would not say anything when called on Wednesday.
There is chaos at the scene
The shocking video from a sheriff’s office deputy’s body camera showed what first rescuers saw when they got to the bridge that links Little Torch Key and Big Pine Keys. The bridge was sinking, so deputies and firemen had to use a roof ladder to get down to the boat.
The sound recorded the boy screaming in pain from his wounds.
He was too hurt to be helped up the ladder, which was about 15 feet high and led to the bridge. Soon after, a tow boat from TowBoat US arrived on the scene. It took the most badly hurt people off and rushed them to the Dolphin Marina on Little Torch Key, where they were put on a helicopter ambulance and flown to the mainland by county medics.
The video also showed a Monroe County firefighter putting a bandage around Lewis’ badly hurt leg to try to keep it together before they helped him get off his boat and onto the towboat.
Deputies from Monroe County arrested Lewis on Tuesday at his home on Cypress Drive in Big Pine Key. Online jail records show that he made his $195,000 bond Wednesday morning. He couldn’t be reached right away for comment, and details about the lawyer he was working with weren’t available either.
Besides three felonies for boating while drunk and causing serious physical harm, he is also charged with one felony for neglecting a child, one misdemeanor for aggravated boating while drunk with a minor, one misdemeanor for reckless boating, and having drug paraphernalia.
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