Florida men charged in fatal boating hit-and-run of 15-year-old ballerina
Authorities have filed misdemeanor charges against two Florida men in connection with the boating hit-and-run death of a 15-year-old high school freshman while she was wakeboarding with friends last year.
Carlos "Bill" Alonso, 79, is charged with violating two U.S. Coast Guard navigational rules, and Edmund Hartley, 31, is charged with violating four Coast Guard rules, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission (FWC).
In May 2024, Ella Adler, 15, and a friend were wakeboarding in Key Biscayne's Nixon Beach, located south of Miami. The girls were being towed by a boat driven by Hartley and carrying a dozen people when they fell into the water in different locations, according to officials.
While in the water, Adler was struck by a second boat that subsequently sped off, officials said. Witnesses reported seeing a center console boat with blue bottom paint and multiple outboard engines at the time of the incident.
The description led investigators to Alonso's Boston whaler docked outside his Coral Gables home, with Alonso previously telling authorities he was unaware he had struck someone, according to his attorneys.
"What happened last year was an absolute tragedy, but it was not Bill's fault," Lauren Krasnoff, the attorney representing Alonso, said in a statement to Fox News Digital. "Bill is an experienced and cautious boater and that is how he acted that day. FWC explicitly told us that they did not find Bill's actions caused the accident. Because of that, we were very surprised to learn about the citations."
Adler was a freshman at Ransom Everglades School in Coconut Grove and a Miami City Ballet ballerina, where she performed in more than 100 shows, according to her obituary.
"In her 15 years on this earth, she dazzled us with her light," her family wrote. "She emanated love and joy."
The 15-year-old ballerina was the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors and was a proud Jewish-American, according to her family.
"She loved Israel and came from a long line of Jewish leaders with a strong commitment to faith and tikkun olam," her obituary reads. "She wore her identity proudly and loudly, just like her parents."
The attorney representing Hartley did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment.
"The FWC extends its deepest sympathies to the family and friends of Ella Adler," a spokesperson said in a statement to Fox News Digital. "Our thoughts remain with them as they continue to cope with this unimaginable loss."
Both men are charged with multiple counts of careless operation of a vessel and have pleaded not guilty.
"My deepest condolences to the Adler family," Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava previously posted to X. "Let's honor her memory by exercising better boat safety, to ensure tragedies like this never happen again. May she rest in peace."
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Fox News
an hour ago
- Fox News
Proud Boys members file federal lawsuit over 'illegal' tactics in Jan. 6 prosecutions
Five members of the Proud Boys are suing the U.S. government and certain employees in the FBI and Department of Justice for $100 million over their Jan. 6 prosecutions. Enrique Tarrio, Zachary Rehl, Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs and Dominic Pezzola allege in the lawsuit the FBI and DOJ violated their constitutional rights with their prosecution over what prosecutors said was their planning of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. In a document filed in a Florida federal court and obtained by Fox News Digital, the men claim "egregious and systemic abuse of the legal system and the United States Constitution to punish and oppress political allies of President Trump, by any and all means necessary, legal, or illegal. "Through the use of evidence tampering, witness intimidation, violations of attorney-client privilege, and placing spies to report on trial strategy, the government got its fondest wish of imprisoning the J6 Defendants, the modern equivalent of placing one's enemies' heads on a spike outside the town wall as a warning to any who would think to challenge the status quo." Fox News Digital has reached out to the U.S. Department of Justice for comment. Four of the five men were convicted of seditious conspiracy after the attack, and Tarrio faced the harshest punishment — 22 years for planning the attack — of any of the Jan. 6 defendants, according to The Wall Street Journal. Nordean was sentenced to 18 years, Biggs was sentenced to 17 years and Rehl was sentenced to 15 years. Pezzola was found guilty of conspiracy to obstruct Congress and sentenced to 10 years in prison. However, President Donald Trump pardoned or commuted the sentences of nearly all the defendants after he took office this year, including Tarrio, Rehl, Nordean, Biggs and Pezzola. All the men except Tarrio were at the U.S. Capitol Jan. 6, according to the Journal. Tarrio had been barred from entering Washington, D.C., because of a previous arrest, The Washington Post reported. "Now that the Plaintiffs are vindicated, free, and able to once again exercise their rights as American citizens, they bring this action against their tormentors for violations of their Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendment Rights … as well as the common law tort of malicious prosecution and false imprisonment," the suit adds. Prosecutors said Pezzola was seen on video using a police riot shield to commit the first breach of the U.S. Capitol Jan. 6. Prosecutors alleged the men were charged under a "novel theory of criminal conspiracy called the 'tool theory,'" according to the suit. "Despite the legal jiggery-pokery employed by the government to obscure the fact, the Plaintiffs were essentially convicted of 'stochastic terrorism,' a leftist bugbear used to describe rhetoric offensive to them that they claim provokes violent acts." The men also claimed in the lawsuit that the government didn't have probable cause to raid their homes.
Washington Post
an hour ago
- Washington Post
5 Proud Boys sue US government over Jan. 6 prosecutions
ORLANDO, Fla. — Five members of the Proud Boys, a far-right militant group, claim their constitutional rights were violated when they were prosecuted for their participation in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, according to a lawsuit filed Friday. The lawsuit was filed in Orlando federal court by former Proud Boys chairman Enrique Tarrio, Joseph Biggs, Zachary Rehl, Ethan Nordean and Dominic Pezzola. It seeks unspecified compensatory damages plus 6% interest and $100 million plus interest in punitive damages.
New York Times
2 hours ago
- New York Times
Sunny Jacobs, a Celebrity After Freed From Death Row, Dies at 77
Sunny Jacobs, a former death row inmate who was convicted of a 1970s double murder in Florida and later freed, becoming a news media celebrity and a leading subject in an acclaimed Off Broadway play and two television movies, died on Tuesday in rural County Galway, Ireland. She was 77. Her death was announced by the Sunny Center, an anti-death penalty nonprofit organization founded by Ms. Jacobs, with locations in Galway and Tampa, Fla. It said she had 'passed away after a fire at the Sunny Healing Center.' The circumstances of the fire were not immediately clear. Ms. Jacobs spent nearly 17 years in prison in Florida, five of them on death row, for the murders of two law enforcement officers in February 1976 at a rest stop near Fort Lauderdale. Her boyfriend at the time, Jesse Tafero, a petty criminal who had been convicted of attempted rape, was also convicted of murder. He was executed by electric chair in Florida in a notoriously botched procedure in May 1990. It took seven minutes and three jolts, and his head caught on fire. Ms. Jacobs, whose death sentence was overturned in 1982, was ultimately freed a decade later, when a federal appeals court found that prosecutors had improperly withheld evidence from the defense. She took a plea deal rather than face retrial and was never legally exonerated. It was this story that formed the basis of Ms. Jacobs's subsequent, celebrated tale — that she had been an innocent, a '28-year-old vegetarian hippie,' as she told The New York Times in a 2011 Vows article about her marriage to a fellow former inmate, the Irishman Peter Pringle, who died in 2023. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
