A bloody weekend accident leads Lake Tarpon area residents to call for more law enforcement.
By CANDACE RONDEAUX
Published June 3, 2003
TARPON SPRINGS - She was barely conscious. Her face was covered with blood. Greg Elam grabbed her hand and checked her pulse. She was alive but unable to speak.
The girl's head-on collision with the rider of another water scooter on Lake Tarpon Saturday didn't just knock the wind out of her. It knocked out most of her front teeth.
"She couldn't talk," Elam said. "Her face was smashed."
It was the second time in six weeks that Elam, 41, said he had seen someone seriously injured in an accident involving a personal watercraft at Richard Ervin Park on the north end of Lake Tarpon.
Now he and roughly a dozen neighbors who live near the city park say enough is enough. They want Pinellas County and Tarpon Springs authorities to beef up patrols there to prevent more serious accidents from happening.
"I love the lake. I love to be on the water," said Elam's wife, Robin. "But it's getting scary out there."
It was especially scary for Anna Peterson on Saturday. It was a little after 4 p.m., when Peterson lost control of a water scooter and collided with two other people riding another personal watercraft. The 17-year-old Tampa resident was one of roughly 20 teenagers riding near the narrow cove of water that abuts both the park and the Elams' boat dock and back yard off Richard Ervin Parkway.
Elam, whose home is literally steps from the park, was one of the first to hear the screams.
"I didn't know it was a wreck at first," Elam recalled. "Because you hear people screaming out here all the time on weekends."
But when Elam saw one of the teenage boys dragging Peterson to shore he knew it was serious. Eyes rolling back in her head, she was fading in and out of consciousness. Someone called for an ambulance.
Within minutes Tarpon Springs Fire Department paramedics were on the scene. About 25 minutes later, Peterson was taken by helicopter to Bayfront Medical Center in St. Petersburg. She was in fair condition Monday, according to Bayfront officials.
Peterson was lucky she survived, Elam said. He and several neighbors worry that the next such accident on the congested waterway could be deadly.
Many who live along this northern section of the lake own personal watercraft themselves. But they say the 40 or 50 enthusiasts who regularly flock to Lake Tarpon's northernmost public shore on the weekends to race through an impromptu obstacle course are getting out of control. Few maintain enough distance from the shore and each other, and almost none of them wear the life jackets required by the state, Elam said.
Neighbors say they routinely call police to complain about the noise and rowdy drinking that goes on at the park. Because of Saturday's accident, several plan to go to tonight's City Commission meeting to ask city officials to patrol the area more frequently.
"If they're going to leave the park open they have to have someone monitor it," Elam said. "They're going to have to take responsibility whether it's the city or the county."
Pinellas County had 28 accidents involving personal watercraft in 2002, more than any other county in the state. Personal watercraft accidents accounted for 11 of the Florida's 52 boating fatalities last year, according to a recent Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission report.
The Pinellas County Sheriff's Office is responsible for enforcing the law on Lake Tarpon's 2,500 acres. The department has a total of 11 marine deputies who monitor roughly 600 miles of the county's coastal waterways, said Pinellas County Sheriff's Office spokesman Lt. Greg Tita. But only one boat regularly patrols Lake Tarpon, and deputies assigned to that boat must also patrol Lake Seminole and the waterways near the Courtney Campbell causeway.
Tita said the marine deputy who routinely patrols Lake Tarpon is familiar with the problems personal watercraft cause near the park.
"Unfortunately, he can't stay on one body of water long enough," Tita said. "The word gets out that the sheriff is gone and everybody knows they can go out and have a free-for-all."
Tita called Saturday's accident tragic, and said his department plans to increase water patrols near the park.
"These people will be cited and some people will probably be taken to jail," he said. "It won't make us popular but it will make the area safer."
