The Tampa Bay Times reported that a boat accident took the life of a teenage girl in the Tampa Bay area early Sunday after she was ejected from a boat on the Intracoastal waterway returning from a Halloween party.
This incident occurred on a boat transiting the Intracoastal waterway in Indian Shores around 1:00 a.m. Sunday, according to a press conference held by the Pinellas County Sheriff. The incident occurred as a group of teenagers returned home from a Halloween night party held near the Treasure Island Causeway. The boat’s driver, a lad sixteen years of age and from the Harbor Bluffs neighborhood west of Largo, was allegedly speeding in a northerly direction in the boat when it hit a channel marker in the Intracoastal waterway. The impact caused all seven teenagers abroad to be ejected into the water, and then the boat continued northwest, unmanned until it slammed into a seawall on the 2000 block of Gulf Boulevard in Indian Shores.
One passenger, an Indian Shores girl, was killed, apparently by drowning, while another was transported to Bayfront Hospital for minor injuries. Everyone else on board was reportedly in good health after the accident.
The driver of the boat faces charges of vessel homicide for the accident, although it has not yet been decided whether to charge him as an adult.