A resident of theFlorida Keys faces felony charges for pushing a boatCuban rafters outside his condominium, after it ran aground on a public beach dragged by the force of the sea.
The incident occurred in November in the small Middle Keys town of Key Colony Beach whenGeorge Friday, a 56-year-old lawyer from New York, pushed a Cuban immigrant boat that had careened onto the private beach of the condominium, where he owns a second home.
Freitag was released on $1,000 bail following police investigations, which ended with his arrest. According to himMiami Herald, littering over 500 pounds is considered a third-degree felony and could result in up to five years in prison if the suspect is convicted.
The New York lawyer, who did not comment to the newspaper, now faces an unusual "felony" charge for littering a public beach. According to the arrest affidavit, an officer noticed on Nov. 28 that a boatload of Cuban immigrants that had been located on the beach at the Continental Inn on West Ocean Drive days earlier was now at Sunset Park, a public beach in the city.
Freitag serves on the board of directors of the Continental Inn condominium association, according to the Florida Division of Corporations. The condominium where he resides is next to the Sunset Park public beach.
Additionally, the Key Colony Beach Police Department received an email around that time, reporting that the boat had been “deliberately placed” in Sunset Park “by unknown persons.”
As part of the investigation, the agents obtained the testimony of two witnesses who were guests of the Continental Inn, who said they had seen Freitag push the boat off the beach with the help of two other people, who were not identified in the police report. .
“Witnesses stated that they saw the boat being pushed out to sea until it was free to float,” Officer John Buckwalter wrote in the Jan. 25 report. “The vessel was observed floating out to sea in a westerly direction and around [a] jetty.”
The Cuban migration crisis It has meant a change for the residents of Key Colony Beach and other cities and condominiums that spread along the Florida Keys, where a good number of the precarious boats used by Cuban rafters have ended up.
The trickle of vessels arriving alone or with occupants to the islands has been occurring over the last year and a half, but it was in the last months of 2022 whenthe arrival of Cuban rafters has multiplied, leaving their boats on beaches and marshes.
The wave of maritime migration reached a critical point during the Christmas holidays,when almost 500 people from Cuba landed on the remote beach of Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas National Park, forcing the closure of its facilities.
More than a thousand more people arrived between Christmas and New Year, indicated the aforementioned media, which echoed the concerns of the authorities and locals about the fate they should give to the migrant boats that dot the beaches, mangroves and private properties throughout the archipelago.
However,the arrival of rafters has decreased since then. Between December 30 and January 1, US agencies intercepted more than 1,300 migrants. Of them, 606 were found at sea, another 59 in the Marquesas Keys, 364 in the Dry Tortugas National Park and 326 in the Florida Keys.
Key Colony Beach is a city located in Monroe County. In the 2010 Census it had a population of 797 inhabitants and a population density of 468.38 people per km².
The situation there, as in many other parts of South Florida, led the governor of Florida at the beginning of the month,Ron DeSantis, to activate the National Guardto deal with the growing flow of Cuban rafters, which he blamed on the "failure" of the president's immigration policyJoe Biden.
For its part, according to theMiami Herald, the Florida Emergency Department said the state would pay to remove migrant boats from people's properties. However, before the executive order signed by the governor, some owners paid private companies to remove the growing number of Cuban rafters' boats.
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