A 9-year-old girl injured when boat falls on her in Sarasota

Sarasota County emergency responders received a call at 11:51 a.m. Tuesday regarding a boat that had fallen on top of a 9-year-old girl at Ken Thompson Park, 1700 Ken Thompson Parkway.

According to Sarasota County EMS Operations Division Chief Carson Sanders, EMS personnel were on scene for about 30 minutes providing treatment before the unidentified girl was flown to All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg as a trauma alert patient.

“We don’t know her condition yet,” Sanders said. “We are awaiting word ourselves. We got called for a boating accident, but it all happened on the land. All we were told on scene is that is some sort of light weight boat fell from the rack and struck her in the head, but that it had fallen from a high up.”

Sanders said he noticed that the racks were mostly filled with kayaks and other similar light weight vessels, but EMS personnel were not informed of the details.

“We were focused on providing care at the scene,” Sanders said. “I know (Sarasota Police Department) were also on scene and they will likely have more details at a later time in determining exactly what happened.”

SPD did not have any further information but posted on Twitter that officers were on scene “assisting with setting a landing zone for a Bayflite medical helicopter and traffic control.”

This story was originally published June 4, 2019 at 2:53 PM.