NEWS

Officers say stolen boat chase like nothing they've seen

Michael Braun
MBRAUN@NEWS-PRESS.COM
Capt. Carmine Marceno of the Lee County Sheriff's Office, left, congratulates Lt. Christopher Nyce, of the Sheriff's Office Marine Unit, on Sunday for helping capture three suspects in a recent boat theft that spanned more than 300 nautical miles. Details of the capture were given at a press conference at the U.S. Coast Guard Station on Fort Myers Beach.

Three suspected boat thieves, manacled and shackled, arrived at the Fort Myers Beach U.S. Coast Guard on Sunday, just a few miles from where a 20-hour, high-speed boat chase began Thursday morning.

The chase, which at times resembled a James Bond movie, ended about 65 miles west of Cuba and 125 east of Cancun, Mexico on Christmas Eve when the three suspects gave up, law enforcement officials said.

The search spanned more than 345 miles and used three Coast Guard aircraft, a small-boat crew from Station Fort Myers Beach and the Coast Guard Cutter William Trump.

Local law enforcement and Coast Guard officials talked about the movie-like chase and capture Sunday at the Fort Myers Beach U.S. Coast Guard station.

The press conference, led by Lee County Sheriff Mike Scott and Commander Randy Brown, deputy commander of Sector St. Petersburg and acting U.S. Coast Guard section commander, coincided with the arrival of the stolen boat, towed to the station by a Coast Guard cutter with suspects aboard.

One suspect, David Llanes Vasquez, 33, of Miami, favoring an injured leg, was taken to a local hospital, a sheriff's spokesman said.

Vasquez and Vidal Farfan-Ramirez, 23, of Mexico, and Raul De La Vega Sauri, 25, of Homestead, were arrested on multiple charges. Vasquez faces 19 charges including burglary, assault, larceny, fleeing police, leaving the scene of an accident and reckless pollution. Farfan-Ramirez and Sauri face larceny and burglary charges with hearings slated Jan. 25.

Vasquez
Farfan-Ramirez

A report from the sheriff's office said the boat was owned by Jack Thomas, 43, of Old Pelican Way on Fort Myers Beach.

Thomas told The News-Press on Sunday that he was on the scene of the theft shortly after it happened.

"I felt pretty confident they would recover the boat," he said, especially after the Coast Guard was able to track the stolen craft.

Thomas said this is the first time something like this has happened to him.

"You're mad," he said about how he felt. "But it has happened to so many others."

The boat was taken after an electrical box cover and wires at the boat lift were tampered with.

The Fort Myers Beach resident said that the trio brought in their own power supply and were able to circumvent security measures he had put in place.

"I have some ideas," he said about improving that security.

Sauri

"I think it is just one of those things," Thomas continued. "It is the world we live in. You take all the measures you can and be happy we have guys like the Lee County Sheriff's Office and the U.S. Coast Guard."

"It was like something out of a James Bond or Mission Impossible movie," Scott said, referring to the suspects' unsuccessful attempt to ram a sheriff's office marine unit boat when it tried to stop the theft and the high-speed chase that ensued.

Scott said the sheriff's office's water and air units were on patrol during the holiday looking for crimes involving high-value boats.

Lee County a popular area for boat thefts

The 2014, 36-foot, center-console boat with three Yamaha 300-horsepower engines, a model in the Invincible line of what are called "go-fast" boats, is worth about $350,000, Scott said.

The 33-foot boat involved in a high-speed chase recently is docked Sunday at the U.S. Coast Guard Station on Fort Myers Beach. The boat has three 300-horsepower engines and has an estimated value of $350,000.

Those kind of boat thefts extend all the way up the west coast of Florida, Brown said.

Lt. Commander Holly Deal, chief of enforcement for the Coast Guard's St. Pete sector, said that in the last six months "we've had a rash of [boat thefts] on the west coast of Florida." She said that boats like the one recovered were among those targeted.

Lee County has the third most number of registered boats in Florida, making it a ripe area for thefts, Scott said. In 2014 there were 44,913 pleasure and commercial craft registered here, behind the 63,319 registered in the Miami-Dade County area and 47,363 in Pinellas County, where St. Petersburg and Clearwater are located.

"Not just boats but boat parts, too. "It is just part of the area where we are," Scott said.

Coast Guard crews detained three men aboard a stolen “go-fast” vessel after a pursuit that covered more than 300 miles Friday. The pursuit came to end after nearly 20 hours when the vessel stopped 125 miles east of Cancun, Mexico.

Scott and Brown said the theft, pursuit and apprehension started when sheriff's units conducting overnight patrols early Thursday received a tip about a boat theft in the area of Old Pelican Bay Drive.

Lt. Chris Nyce, with the sheriff's marine detail, said as his unit approached the craft at a slow speed and activated lights and siren, the suspect piloting the boat gunned the throttle and aimed at the sheriff's vessel.

"We were able to get out of the way at the last second," Nyce said, using his arms to indicate mere feet. "Or they would have come right over us."

A U.S. Coast Guard photo shows a stolen boat trying to outrun Coast Guard units on Christmas Eve in the Gulf of Mexico

Nyce, a former Coast Guardsman, told Scott that he had never seen anything like that.

Brown said the suspects took off, hitting several navigational aids and causing some damage to the hull, main deck and engine brackets.

After the stolen craft exited state waters, Brown said Coast Guard aircraft spotted it again and tracked its location. The sheriff's report said the stolen boat maintained an evasive course and stopped several times to refuel.

Scott said the three suspects were "pretty well beaten up" by the rough water with waves up to 8-feet at times.

A U.S. Coast Guard photo shows a stolen boat trying to outrun Coast Guard units on Christmas Eve in the Gulf of Mexico

"We're glad they didn't have guns, that would have changed things," Scott said. "They could have tried to shoot out their engines but then you run the risk of hitting someone."

Lt. Commander Deal said use of force procedures had been started but that Coast Guard boats never got close enough to use force.

The USCG William Trump, the cutter that followed and its personnel boarded the stolen craft, is armed with four Browning .50 caliber machine guns and a 25 mm automatic gun.

The suspects brought extra fuel containers.

"They weren't going to quit, neither were we," Brown said. He also pointed to the number of pleasure boats in the area and the high-speed nature of the chase: "It clearly could have had a more tragic outcome."

The sheriff would not speculate what the three suspects might have wanted to do with the speedy craft but acknowledged that such boats are used for smuggling or other illicit activities.

"The bad guys did a good job," Brown said, adding that the owner did have several security measures in place on the covered boat lift the craft was stolen from.

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Boat thefts in Florida

According to a report by the National Insurance Crime Bureau, more than twice as many watercraft were reported stolen from Florida in 2013 than in any other state. That was also true of 2012.

In 2012 and 2013, the last two years statistics were available, the Fort Myers area has been one of the top three areas for boat thefts in the U.S., behind Miami and Tampa.

According to the Lee County Sheriff's Office said there were 52 calls of stolen boats from Feb. 24 through mid-August this year.