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You can't make this stuff up, folks...

The Tradition

HR King
Apr 23, 2002
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ORMOND BEACH, Fla. – An Ormond Beach family gave Volusia County deputies an unexpected assist in arresting a man on a stolen Yamaha WaveRunner, according to the sheriff’s office.

The sheriff’s office posted body-camera video (see below) of the arrest Monday on Twitter.

The video shows a deputy approaching a family on a dock, asking if they could take him and another deputy out on the water to nab the man on the stolen WaveRunner.

“What they said was that they had a situation about two miles down the river, and someone had stolen a Jet Ski, and they did not have a boat in the water at the time,” said Jimmy Hagen, the boat’s owner.

Hagen said his two young sons were also with them. They had just launched their boat when the Volusia deputies approached them.

“I just said well why don’t you just take the boat yourselves,” said Hagen.

The video shows deputies approaching the man on the watercraft. In the video, the deputies draw their guns and order the man to swim over to them.

“I don’t know how to swim,” the man said in the video.

“So, you’re gonna’ take a (WaveRunner) and you don’t know how to swim?” one of the deputies shouted back at the man.

The deputies are then seen in the video throwing the hapless accused thief a rope, pulling him onto their boat.

The bodycam video ends with deputies thanking the family for allowing them to use the boat.

“As they approached the dock, they got the suspect up, and I was like, ‘Oh, gosh! They got this guy in handcuffs,’” Hagen said.

Hagen said he and his family waited about thirty to forty-five minutes for the deputies to return with Williams in custody.

He called it a unique sight and experience, especially for his kids.

“The one thing I did say was that life is about experiences and we’re going to be talking about this one probably for the rest of our lives,” he said.

The WaveRunner thief was identified as Ronald Williams, 48. He faces charges of grand theft and trespassing.

 
We had three wave runners (not ours) stolen off of our condo‘s dock at Lake of the Ozarks a couple weeks ago. Several other condo complexes on the lake were hit that same weekend and wave runners stolen according to police. Have had the condo for almost 6 years and never had anything stolen at our complex. Complex is gated so they must have come from the water. Thieves are getting brazen.
 
We had three wave runners (not ours) stolen off of our condo‘s dock at Lake of the Ozarks a couple weeks ago. Several other condo complexes on the lake were hit that same weekend and wave runners stolen according to police. Have had the condo for almost 6 years and never had anything stolen at our complex. Complex is gated so they must have come from the water. Thieves are getting brazen.

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We had three wave runners (not ours) stolen off of our condo‘s dock at Lake of the Ozarks a couple weeks ago. Several other condo complexes on the lake were hit that same weekend and wave runners stolen according to police. Have had the condo for almost 6 years and never had anything stolen at our complex. Complex is gated so they must have come from the water. Thieves are getting brazen.
Are there no ignition keys for these things?
No way to lock them up?
 
Are there no ignition keys for these things?
No way to lock them up?
The three that were stolen didn’t have the keys in them. Sounds like they just lowered the lifts and towed them out. They can be locked up, and I think the lifts can be locked as well, but these weren’t. Crazy
 
Reminds me of a story a friend of mine told me about a stolen wave runner in key west. My friend worked at a place that did wave runner rentals and had a customer walk up and ask how far it was to Cuba. They said it was about 90 miles. He asked what kind of range the wave runners had on a full tank and they said somewhere around 90-100 miles depending on variables. He then basically asked what direction to Cuba and when they said "south" he asked them to point, which they did. After receiving the answers to his questions he said that he wanted to rent a wave runner and insisted that it had a full tank. They explained that for an hour rental there was plenty of fuel in the tank but he still insisted so they filled it up.

Clearly some critical thinking skills were lacking on the renter's part but it's usually high school kids that handle the rentals and even if they realized what was happening, they likely didn't care enough to say anything.

So the guy gets the wave runner and immediately heads in the direction they pointed until he disappeared over the horizon. He was found a couple of miles off the coast of cuba clinging to his wave runner.

You can probably still find news articles for this. It happened while I was in high school so somewhere around the early 90s.
 
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Reactions: torbee
Reminds me of a story a friend of mine told me about a stolen wave runner in key west. My friend worked at a place that did wave runner rentals and had a customer walk up and ask how far it was to Cuba. They said it was about 90 miles. He asked what kind of range the wave runners had on a full tank and they said somewhere around 90-100 miles depending on variables. He then basically asked what direction to Cuba and when they said "south" he asked them to point, which they did. After receiving the answers to his questions he said that he wanted to rent a wave runner and insisted that it had a full tank. They explained that for an hour rental there was plenty of fuel in the tank but he still insisted so they filled it up.

Clearly some critical thinking skills were lacking on the renter's part but it's usually high school kids that handle the rentals and even if they realized what was happening, they likely didn't care enough to say anything.

So the guy gets the wave runner and immediately heads in the direction they pointed until he disappeared over the horizon. He was found a couple of miles off the coast of cuba clinging to his wave runner.

You can probably still find news articles for this. It happened while I was in high school so somewhere around the early 90s.
Who the hell tries to escape from Florida TO Cuba!? 😂
 
Are there no ignition keys for these things?
No way to lock them up?
They do have keys... I could be wrong but I think they're like golf cart keys though. They're universal and work for all models by the manufacturer. The nature of jet skis make them something that tends to be lost a lot.

Fun fact, there are basically 2 cuts of golf cart keys that operate about 90 percent of golf carts in the world, across multiple manufacturers.
 
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