Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Teen Girl Killed By Boat While Wakeboarding: The Story So Far

Episode Date: May 15, 2024

Ella Adler, 15, was wakeboarding on May 11 with a friend when they fell from the boat towing them in Key Biscayne, Florida. Wildlife officers say while Ella was waiting for the boat to pick her up, another boat hit her and failed to stop. Law enforcement launched a massive search for the boat. Ella was a beloved student and member of the Miami Ballet. Law&Crime’s Angenette Levy looks at the questions that remain about the crash and what charges could be filed with maritime attorney Mike Winkleman in this episode of Crime Fix — a daily show covering the biggest stories in crime.Get 50% off of confidential background reports at https://www.truthfinder.com/lccrimefix and access information about almost anyone!Host:Angenette Levy  https://twitter.com/Angenette5Guest:Mike Winkleman https://www.instagram.com/cruiseshiplaw/CRIME FIX PRODUCTION:Head of Social Media, YouTube - Bobby SzokeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinVideo Editing - Daniel CamachoAudio Editing - Brad MaybeGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@LawandCrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this law and crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. FWC officers have identified a boat fitting the description of the vessel that struck Ella Adler. A 15-year-old girl hit and killed by a boat on Mother's Day weekend. The tragic story of the death of Ella Adler and where the investigation stands with an attorney who specializes in boating cases. Thanks for joining me for Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. Ella Adler was doing what people do in South Florida. She was out enjoying the water in Key Biscayne, Florida on Saturday when Florida wildlife officers say a boat hit her

and killed her. There are still a lot of questions about what happened, but wildlife officials are saying that Ella and another girl were wakeboarding the day before Mother's Day being towed by a boat when they both fell in the water in different locations. Ella was hit by a boat. An incident report just released says that boat that hit Ella was occupied by one person, a 78-year-old man from Coral Gables. The boat did not stop. She was near the Nixon Beach sandbar off of Key Biscayne. The boat is in our custody and its owner is cooperating. We'd like to thank all the public for their help and support in this investigation. Only in Dade, a citizen journalism

account on X posted videos showing what they claim to be the boat of interest being towed away by law enforcement. In a video posted on Facebook, an FWC spokesperson voiced sympathy for Ella Adler's family, reading a statement from the agency's chairman. As FWC Commission Chairman Ronnie Barreto said, and I quote, our community suffered a great loss this Mother's Day weekend. As FWC Commission Chairman Rodney Barreto said, and I quote, our community suffered a great loss this Mother's Day weekend. As chairman of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, I would like to thank all our officers and those from various law enforcement agencies who have worked and continue to work tirelessly on this investigation.

The FWC and its officers have called in additional resources from other parts of the state and have worked around the clock to find the vessel involved in the accident. As a father and grandfather, my heart is broken for the Adler family. Ella's death is devastating for her family, friends, and the community at large. FWC and our partner law enforcement agencies will not stop until we have all the answers and the case is solved. Ella is being mourned by her family and friends. Her obituary called her a star. I'll read just a little bit of this for you. She was a force of nature, and when she was near, everyone felt a gravitational pull toward her. In her 15 years on this earth, she dazzled us with her light. She emanated love and joy. She was beautiful. NBC6 in Miami reports the area where Ella was hit,

she was near the Nixon Beach Sandbar. It's a party spot and has had some similar incidents in the past. The TV station said its reporting found at least five instances that left people injured or dead near that sandbar in the last several years. Ella was a ballerina with the Miami Ballet, appearing in the Nutcracker according to her obituary. She was also a student at Ransom Everglades School, where she performed on the dance team. Ella was described as compassionate and speaking up for what she thought was right. She always had a big posse of friends. That's also in her obituary. Ella's family released a statement Tuesday night confirming that First Lady Jill Biden paid her respects as they sat Shiva. Ella was beautiful and shined brightly. In her 15 years, she gave us more light than we could

have ever dreamed. While we cope with this unspeakable tragedy, we ask the public to give us our privacy as we mourn. We also wish to extend our gratitude to law enforcement for their hard work and commitment to helping bring some closure to this horrific loss. I want to take a quick break from telling you about this case involving the death of Ella Adler to tell you about something that can help you learn more about the people that you encounter in your life every day. It's a great website and it's called truthfinder.com. Truthfinder is one of the world's largest public record search services. Truthfinder has just one goal, and that is to help you and me learn the truth about the

people that we meet. Here's how it works. Simply log on to truthfinder.com and put in a name. Within minutes and maybe even seconds, you will get reports that include phone numbers, addresses, friends, family, criminal records, and much more. It will also show you sex offender statuses for the people who live in your neighborhood. The cases that I cover make it clear that you have to do everything you can to keep you and your loved ones safe. So right now, Crime Fix viewers and listeners can get 50% off of

confidential background reports at truthfinder.com slash lccrimefix. Log on to truthfinder.com slash lccrimefix and start accessing information about almost anyone. Mike Winkelmann is a maritime lawyer. I want to bring him in to discuss this awful, tragic case. Mike, your first thoughts upon hearing about the crash that took Ella Adler's life. Not again. I mean, Florida leads the country in boating accidents and boating fatalities. So sadly, this is a story we hear far too often. I think these are clearly

preventable incidents. And it just breaks my heart that a 15-year-old girl with such a bright future is just cut short due to clear operator negligence. And let's talk a little bit about that. You kind of live in that general area down there, and you're familiar with the Nixon Beach sandbar area. And we were reading on the NBC6 website down there in Miami that there have been some other instances of people being either injured or killed in that general area. Do you know why that is? Is there just not enough signage in that area? Is it too congested? I mean, what are your thoughts on that general area, Nixon Beach Sandbar, which is named after President Nixon? He apparently had a home nearby at one point.

He did. He had a home on Key Biscayne a long time ago, so they call it Nixon Beach, named after him. It's right off the coast of Key Biscayne, extremely popular area in Biscayne Bay, which is really the heart of Miami, Florida. I'm a native Miamian. It's a beautiful area, a wonderful area, which is why it's so popular, particularly with the sandbar. Stiltsville is not too far from there, a really beautiful area. But it's a heavily trafficked area, a lot of high-profile incidents over the years, catastrophic injuries and deaths. Certainly wouldn't be the first place that I would take my family to go water skiing if I was going to hop out on the bay for a day. So I think there may be an element of some negligence on the operator of the water skiing craft. But yeah, very heavily trafficked area, not my first choice for water skiing. And because

of heavy traffic like this, I think that's where there's a greater likelihood of incidents like this happening. There's still so much. There's still so much we just don't know about what happened. We know that the FWC said that Ella was out water skiing. She's being towed by one boat or a yacht, I think is how some have described it. She falls off, which is what happens. She's waiting for them to come back and get her. And she is horrifically hit by this other boat and that boat does not stop so so we don't know much more about the circumstances other than the FWC says they've located the boat they believed hit her the owner is cooperating but we don't we don't know why this person didn't stop did they not know that they hit her? How fast were

they traveling? So there are a lot of questions that still need to be answered. Oh, no doubt about it. There is far more questions than there are answers at this point. But what we do know certainly leads to an easy conclusion that the person that hit Ella was clearly at fault. And it was either a situation where if you give them the benefit of the doubt, they didn't know that they hit Ella, they didn't see her in the water. I find that extremely hard to believe because if you are operating your vessel reasonably, you are keeping a lookout for dangers anywhere, not just to protect the person, someone else, but to protect yourself and to protect your vessel.

And if you're in or around Key Biscayne, Nixon Beach, that area, on a Saturday afternoon in May, that's high traffic time in that area. So you should be absolutely maintaining a hyper-vigilant lookout. So for me, in my opinion, it's hard to believe that they didn't know that they hit Ella, and instead there was a hit-and-run type of a situation. But giving them the benefit of the doubt, not that I think they deserve it, that would be the situation. They didn't know what happened. I understand there was a light chop in the area. Maybe they just thought it was a chop. I find that hard to believe.

What I think is the more likely version of events was that they did know that they hit her. There's likely alcohol involved. They were likely out all day coming back in, maybe even had autopilot on, realized it happened, decided to leave the scene. Interesting. So you handle voting cases. You're an expert in this. So that would be your assessment. Plus you're from the area. That's kind of your feeling,

your gut feeling on this, looking at what happened, that it's highly unlikely that the boater, the driver of the boat, the operator didn't know that they hit somebody. Absolutely. And yeah, I'm a maritime attorney. This is all I do. I'm a born and raised Miamian. Literally all the cases that I handle are maritime cases. The majority are generally related to cruise ship injuries. Those are maritime incidents, all types of incidents, but of course, boating accidents, yacht accidents, et cetera. So no, I mean, I've been doing this literally for 20 years. My firm's been doing this since 1971. Based on my experience and expertise, in my opinion, I think it's more likely than not that this was a hit and run type of a situation.

So let's talk about that. Let's look at a couple of scenarios here. First of all, let's look at the hit and run scenario. Let's say this was a hit and run where the boater is aware that they actually struck somebody, Ella, and they keep going, and maybe there was alcohol involved, what are the types of charges that could be filed if that was the scenario, the one that you think is most likely? Then the most likely charges would be felony vessel homicide, which is essentially murder, including hit and run, which would be an aggravating circumstance. And so you would be looking at an incredibly hefty prison sentence in a case like this. If you looked at it from the other end and assumed that there was no awareness, they didn't

know that they hit Ella, you would be looking at basically careless driving, which would be a much less severe type of a sentence. So you've got a huge gap in terms of the types of penalties that could be the charges that could be incurred. And of course, the prison time that could be served for an incident like this. And that's just the criminal side of it. There's also the civil side of it, which I would guarantee this will end up in years of litigation, all of which will be catered to do justice for Ella and compensate and make up for the life that was taken. Let's say the other scenario that somebody's boating and heaven forbid, forbid, they, they hit Ella and they just, they didn't know. And they kept going. What kind of charges could be filed in that case?

Because you and I were talking about this yesterday, you know, by phone and you said that wouldn't matter if they didn't know. You could still be charged because you have your responsibility as a boater to be kind of paying attention to what's going on in front of you and around you. You know, you're operating the vessel on the water. Absolutely. I think at a bare minimum, the criminal charges in play would be careless driving, not operating the vessel reasonably, which is a criminal charge, could result in jail time, and really should result in jail time. Certainly, it's a far difference from if there was a, they knew that they hit Ella, and they went away, far more serious charges on the criminal side. On the civil side, frankly, it doesn't really make a difference. There's negligence either way. It's

just, was it negligence of just not knowing that they hit her, not keeping a proper lookout, or was it something more egregious in terms of they knew they hit her, they left the scene. Either way, that vessel is at fault. They will be on the hook for negligence for Ella's death, in my opinion. I think there's also potential liability as it relates to the operator of the ski vessel choosing to go water skiing in this area, knowing it's a heavily trafficked area, knowing it's an area where there were prior similar incidents. So I think there's potential civil liability on both vessels. So we have the Florida Wildlife Commission coming out and saying, you know, they are determined to see this through to get to the bottom of what happened. They have the boat. They said the owner is cooperating. You know, there are different levels of cooperation. We don't

know exactly what that means. And we don't know how they tracked down the boat. We don't know if the owner of the boat called in and said, hey, yeah, that was my boat. We don't know if somebody called in a tip. We don't know how these things came about. So, you know, we do know that they impounded the boat. We've seen the video of that. What do you think is the most likely scenario here? Do you see charges coming quickly? Do you think this will take some time? In my experience, it will take some time. I think the FWC does a great job. They will do a full, fair, and thorough investigation. I would be surprised if it took... It's hard to estimate because I think there's a lot of data out there. There's a lot of witnesses to it, and I think they need to pour all through it.

I am very interested to know, did they find the vessel on their own, or did this person turn themselves in? My instinct is that they found the vessel. I mean, I would guess that they searched areas all along the bay. Where they found the vessel is really not too far from where the incident was. That's an affluent area of Miami

where the houses are right on the water there. They're actually in a bit of an out cove. But my instinct is they found the vessel. Yes, the person is cooperating. I think there's a lot more information that needs to come from it, but I'm really interested to see what shakes out. Well, it is a tragedy. And that 15-year-old girl should be here. It is horrible.

And we will keep an eye on it to see what comes from the investigation. But just a really awful, sad thing that's happened. Mike Winkleman, thank you so much. We hope you'll come back sometime. I sure will. Thanks for having me. Now, just a note, I reached out to the Florida Wildlife Commission to see if anyone would be available for an interview to talk about the latest on the investigation. And I was told no one would be available, but we'll certainly keep an eye on this case and bring you the very latest. That's it for this episode of Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. Thanks so much for being with us. I'll see you back here next time.