MIAMI — Edmund Hartley stood beside his lawyer as a judge learned the 33-year-old would plead guilty Tuesday to two misdemeanors for his role in the 2024 boat crash that killed teenager Ella Adler.
It happened on May 11, 2024 near Key Biscayne.
Hartley, then 30, was the captain hired to take Adler, 15, of Miami Beach, and her friends out on a yacht. Adler and another teen were wakeboarding as Hartley towed them along a busy waterway near Key Biscayne. At one point, Adler fell off her wakeboard.
“It’s the state’s contention that by the defendant’s decision to continue pulling Ella’s friend even after Ella had fallen, he put Ella in mortal danger,” prosecutor Laura Adams said. “As the defendant begins to circle heading northbound to where Ella is, that is where Mr. Alonso comes barreling through on his own vessel.
Carlos “Bill” Alonso, ran Adler over and killed her while operating another boat. The Coral Gables man, then 78, said he did not even realize he hit anyone.
Adler’s father spoke at the hearing Tuesday, telling the judge about how his daughter was a talented dancer and an excellent student at Ransom Everglades High School in Coconut Grove.
“Ella didn’t just live. She danced through life,” Matthew Adler, Ella’s father said. “And now she’s gone.”
He also spoke to Hartley directly.
“Having two inexperienced teenagers wakeboarding an active channel filled with large boats and limited visibility was dangerous,” Matthew Adler said. Ella paid for those failures with her life.
In exchange for Hartley’s guilty pleas to failure to have due regard for dangers and failure to use all available means to determine if the risk of collision exists, the state agreed to drop two other misdemeanors.
Hartley will spend the next year on probation and must complete a boater safety course, a sentence the state says they reviewed with the Adler family.
“I have reviewed this with the Adler family and although probably we would all like to see more significant punishment for these types of offenses, the legislature has deemed it fit to make them second-degree misdemeanors so our hands are tied to a certain degree as to what we can seek in these cases,” Adams said.
Hartley must also make a $5,000 donation to the victim’s compensation fund and an additional $2,500 donation in Ella Adler’s name.
Alonso, now 79, pleaded guilty to misdemeanors in January and was sentenced to six months of probation and a boater safety course.
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