Man in airboat shoots at repair crew working on bridge, Florida cops say. He’s charged
A man in Florida has been arrested four days after a bridge repair crew said he fired shots at them while they worked, a sheriff’s office said.
A crew from Underwater Mechanix Services LLC, a commercial marine construction company, was working on repairs of a bridge on State Road 46 near C.S. Lee Park in Geneva on Feb. 24, the Volusia Sheriff’s Office said in a Feb. 28 news release and the company confirmed to McClatchy News.
The work required some of the crew to be underwater, and the crew put up flags to alert passing boaters of the divers, the company told WOFL.
As they worked, the crew said a man on an airboat kept speeding by them at dangerously close distances and yelling at them from his boat, the sheriff’s office said.
“You’re sending a bunch of waves, and our floats are becoming incredibly unstable,” dive supervisor Dakota Atkinson told WOFL. “Someone in the water, not to mention the divers below the water, are also worried about their heads getting smashed in.”
The crew tried to wave down the man on the airboat to warn him to slow down, but instead the man started yelling back and circling the crew at closer and closer distances, the crew told WOFL.
The man made “reckless passes in an airboat, then started yelling and ultimately pulled out a handgun and fired,” the sheriff’s office said.
No one was hit by the bullets, deputies said, but the crew said it was a close call.
“Everybody hit the deck really quick,” Atkinson told WOFL. “Everyone was on the ground. He fired at basically where they would have been standing, and it could have been really bad.”
The crew refused to keep working on the project until the man was taken into custody, the sheriff’s office said.
The boater was later identified as a 69-year-old man from Mims, according to the sheriff’s office. He was taken into custody on three counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
The company told McClatchy News it would continue work on the bridge following his arrest.
Geneva is about 25 miles northeast of Orlando.
This story was originally published February 29, 2024 at 2:35 PM with the headline "Man in airboat shoots at repair crew working on bridge, Florida cops say. He’s charged."
