KEY WEST, Fla. — What are friends for? One man may be asking himself that after police said his friend ditched him in the middle of the road in “extreme pain” during a stolen golf cart “joyride” around Key West over the weekend.
Authorities said the suspect, from Polk County, spent the rest of the day before his arrest “cruising around Duval Street like nothing happened” after leaving his friend incapacitated.
Key West police said they responded to the 2800 block of North Roosevelt Boulevard at around 7:45 a.m. Saturday, after receiving a 911 call about an injured man.
According to an arrest report, a witness told police that she saw the man lying in the outbound lane and “helped move (him) out of the road and onto the sidewalk,” and called police after he and another man wouldn’t.
The injured man told police that he got tossed off the cart while riding in the rear after his friend, later identified as Vincent Franklin Fortin, 51, of Winter Haven, made “an abrupt U-turn,” police said.
He “was experiencing extreme pain in his hip and could not move his leg” and needed emergency surgery for a broken hip at Lower Keys Medical Center.
Police said they were “unable to see the golf cart or the driver” after arriving, but the other man at the scene said he recognized Fortin “from (a) previous incarceration.”
According to police, about 15 minutes later, a 62-year-old woman living in the 1100 block of Duval Street called police to report that she noticed her four-seater EZ-GO golf cart was gone. Authorities said she checked her security camera footage and saw a man driving away with it at around 5 a.m.
Police said later that day, an officer patrolling the Lower Duval area saw Fortin blow a red light on the stolen golf cart and pulled him over, taking him into custody on charges of grand theft and leaving the scene of a crash causing serious bodily injury.
Records show he’s also facing a charge of operating a vehicle without a valid license.
According to the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office website, Fortin remained in the agency’s Key West jail Tuesday on a $41,000 bond. He’s scheduled to be arraigned on Jan. 29.
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