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Marina owner says car hit him

Marina owner says woman in car hit him, fled

By MARY SPICUZZA
Published March 21, 2006

HOLIDAY - The petite, bikini-clad woman and her friends aroused suspicion from the start.

The three women simply walked down the dock at Anclote Village Marina and climbed into a pontoon boat with a couple of guys. But none of the employees at the privately owned marina recognized any of them - or their boat.

So marina owner Merle Douglas Carroll got involved.

"I went to the vessel and asked them if they had parked on the property, and told them it was private," Carroll said. "They assured us they had no vehicles on site."

He told them he could - and would - have illegally parked cars towed from the property. This wasn't the first time that gorgeous weather brought overflow parking from nearby Anclote River Park. That was about 11 a.m. Sunday.

The group didn't return until about 6 p.m., when Carroll spotted them heading for his parking lot.

"I said I was disappointed that they had lied and parked illegally," he said.

The petite woman didn't take it very well.

She "was not real polite," Carroll said. "In my unprofessional opinion, she seemed under the influence."

She then became threatening.

"If you touch my Volkswagen bug I would have you f----- up," she told Carroll, a Pasco County Sheriff's Office report said.

Carroll, 51, said the woman threatened to have him sexually assaulted. He added that she said all of this in front of his 18-year-old son, James.

"I told her that it was against the law to suggest that she would sexually assault me, and that I felt she was harassing me," he said.

The woman also told him that she'd been drinking and doing cocaine all day, he added.

After Carroll suggested that she wasn't in a condition to drive, the woman and her friends climbed back in the pontoon boat and left.

But she returned to the parking lot a little more than an hour later, as a tow truck arrived to remove the Volkswagen.

Which, it turns out, wasn't really her car. A restaurant patron later claimed it.

As Carroll was in the parking lot, directing the tow truck driver to the Volkswagen, the woman climbed into a silver Mercedes CLK 43 0 and drove toward him.

"She sped off towards me," he said. "I couldn't get out of the way fast enough. She spun me over the vehicle, over the windshield. I must have come over the passenger side. I struck the passenger side mirror, and struck the asphalt."

Carroll thinks he was unconscious after he was hit and fell, head first, on the ground. The woman kept driving.

One witness said he couldn't tell if Carroll was knocked out. He definitely appeared to be in shock, witness Brad Schenk said, but added that Carroll handled the whole hit-and-run incident well.

"But sometimes the nice guy finishes last," Schenk said. "Or in his case, the nice guy gets hit by a car."

The car is described as a two-door silver Mercedes with a SpongeBob SquarePants doll lying on the back window shelf.

The driver is described as a white female, 5 feet 6 and 110 pounds, about 25 years old, with long brown curly hair. She was wearing a bikini and zipup top with longer shorts.

"They were capris or something," Carroll said.

Anyone with information about the Mercedes or the driver is asked to call the Pasco County Sheriff's Office tipline at 1-800-706-2488.

--Mary Spicuzza covers education in Pasco County. She can be reached in west Pasco at 869-6241 or toll-free at 1-800-333-7505, ext. 6241. Her e-mail address is mspicuzza@sptimes.com

[Last modified March 21, 2006, 02:30:40]