FORT MYERS, Fla. — A 20-hour high-speed boat chase that at times resembled a James Bond movie ended about 65 miles west of Cuba on Christmas Eve when the three suspects just gave up, law enforcement officials said.
Local law enforcement and Coast Guard officials, during a press conference Sunday at the Fort Myers Beach U.S. Coast Guard station, described the capture of the suspects after an action that spanned more than 300 nautical miles.
The press conference, led jointly 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 three suspects in handcuffs aboard.
Arrested on multiple charges were David Llanes Vasquez, 33, of Miami, as well as Farfan Ramirez-Vidal and Sauri Raul De La Vega. Vasquez faces 19 charges including burglary, assault, larceny, fleeing police, leaving the scene of an accident and reckless pollution. Details on the other two men and their charges were not yet available.
The suspects were shackled, manacled and handed over to the sheriff's office. One suspect, favoring an obviously injured leg, was taken to a local hospital, a sheriff's spokesman said.
"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 at the outset and the high-speed chase that ensued.
Scott said the sheriff's office had been on patrol with both water and air units during the holiday on the lookout for such types of criminal activity involving high-value boats.
The 36-foot, center-console boat with three 300-horsepower engines, a model in the Invincible line of what are called "go-fast" boats, is worth about $350,000, Scott said.
Brown said the issue of such boat thefts extends all the way up the west coast of Florida.
Making this area attractive to thieves, Scott said, is the fact that Lee County is the third-highest area in Florida for boat registrations. 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.
"We have a lot of boats," the sheriff said, adding that boat thefts are an ongoing issue. Not just boats but boat parts, too. "It is just part of the area where we are," Scott 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.
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, Fort Myers Beach.
"The Lee County Sheriff's Office saw activity and contacted the Coast Guard," Brown said.
Lt. Chris Nyce, with the LCSO'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."
Later, Scott said that Nyce, a former Coast Guardsman, told him that he had never seen anything like that before.
Brown said the suspects took off, hitting several aids to navigation and causing some damage to the lower bow area of the boat.
After the stolen craft exited state waters, Brown said Coast Guard aircraft spotted it again and tracked its location. 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.
Scott said the three suspects were "pretty well beaten up" by the boat's response to the rough water with waves up to 8 feet at times. He added that the sheriff's office and the Coast Guard were prepared to go to any measures to stop the suspects.
"We're glad they didn't have guns, that would have changed things," he said. "They could have tried to shoot out their engines but then you run the risk of hitting someone."
The sheriff said there were a lot of factors, like how close to shore the boat was, that are used in issuing shooting orders.
Lt. Commander Deal agreed, saying that use-of-force procedures had been started but that Coast Guard boats never got close enough to be able to use force.
If it had, the USCG William Trump, the cutter that followed and eventually boarded the stolen craft, is armed with four Browning .50 caliber machine guns and a 25mm automatic gun.
The suspects who took the boat were prepared, Scott said, to the extent of having extra fuel that they jettisoned when the chase began.
"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."
Instead, when the vessel was stopped about 125 miles east of Cancun, Mexico, a small crew from the Cutter Trump apprehended the three suspects without incident. The three were transferred aboard the Coast Guard Cutter Marlin for transit back to lead investigators of the sheriff's office.
The sheriff said he 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 sheriff and Brown also said that security measures can thwart thefts, and encouraged their use, but acknowledged that as in this case, if someone wants to steal something they can always find a way.
"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 from which the craft was stolen.
