With the consistently beautiful weather and most of its border touched by water, it is no surprise that boating is a popular leisure activity in Florida. Although they provide an immense amount of pleasure and fun, they are incredibly powerful vehicles. Those that operate a boat must do so with care and caution.
A wrongful death lawsuit filed on Thursday said that those operating a 40-foot pleasure boat on Sunday, May 4, certainly didn’t use that requisite care. Their failure cost a 23-year-old man his life, and he wasn’t even one of the individuals on the boat that day.
A lot of things went wrong on Sunday, and it all started with a boating event sponsoring Voli Vodka. Those in charge failed to provide a captain with adequate training, said the complaint. Then, Voli Vodka allowed a DJ without the necessary training to operate the large watercraft.
This inexperienced DJ then drove the boat onto a sandbar where it became sufficiently stuck. The young man and recent police academy grad happened upon this boat stuck in the mud and offered his help. Instead of turning off the motor, the DJ left the engines running while the young man pushed the craft.
While pushing the boat, the propeller came in contact with his torso, causing the injuries that later claimed his life. “I don’t know how this happened,” said the boy’s mother, “because he was my life, my only boy.”
This mother was left in a state of more questions than answers, as are many families after the loss of a loved one. During a time of mourning, a wrongful death attorney can take care of the details to ensure that those responsible for the death are held liable through legal relief.
Source: NBC 6, “Lawsuit Filed Against South Florida’s DJ Laz in Fatal Boating Incident,” Willard Shepard and Alexandra Leon, May 9, 2014
