An alleged Florida Jet Ski thief did not make it very far when he attempted to steal a Jet Ski, thanks to the generosity of a good Samaritan who helped police officers.
When 48-year-old Ronald Williams tried to steal a Jet Ski in Volusia County, Florida, his plans went sideways when he could not even get the watercraft started. Instead, he decided to drift away on the stolen Jet Ski.
Responding officers could see Williams drifting around the water on the Jet Ski he allegedly stole but had no immediate way to reach him.
That is when officers approached the owner of a boat and asked him if he would take them out on the water to capture the suspect. Instead of driving the officers to the Jet Ski, the good Samaritan told them they could borrow the boat as long as they brought it back.
Officers used the boat to reach Williams and asked him to swim to them. Williams, who was adrift on open water on board a Jet Ski he could not start, told police he did not know how to swim.
“So you’re going to take a Jet Ski and you don’t know how to swim?” one sheriff’s deputy can be heard yelling at Williams on body cam footage released by police.
Deputies then threw a rope to the suspect and told him to tie it to the Jet Ski so they could bring him to shore, without making Williams try his hand at swimming.
Williams was eventually arrested and taken in to custody on charges of grand theft of a motor vehicle and trespassing. The Jet Ski was returned to its owner.
“The truth is stranger than fiction,” said Volusia County Sheriff Mike Chitwood on “Dan Abrams Live.” “This guys is biking through a neighborhood, neighbors see him cut through a backyard, get on a dock where folks weren’t home and try to start the Jet Ski.”
When the suspect failed to start the Jet Ski, which the owners had disabled, he instead decided to make his grand getaway by floating away despite witnesses screaming at him that they were going to call the police.
“Where he was going to go, I have no idea. But fortunately, we probably saved his life because he probably would have drowned,” Chitwood said.
The possibly life-saving capture of Williams and return of the Jet Ski to its owners would not have been possible without the family that allowed the police to use their boat.
“Fortunately, these folks were fantastic; they let us commandeer the boat to go out and do what we needed to do to make the arrest,” Chitwood said.
