2 charged in ‘hit-and-run’ boating death of 15-year-old Florida ballerina mowed over while wakeboarding: officials

Two men have been charged in connection with the Florida hit-and-run boating death of 15-year-old wakeboarder Ella Adler more than a year after the tragic incident, officials announced Tuesday.

One of the men charged, 78-year-old Carlos Guillermo Alonso, allegedly struck Adler with his 42-foot Boston Whaler in Biscayne Bay on May 11, 2024, after the teen had lost her grip on a tow rope attached to another boat and fallen into the ocean.

The whaler struck the stranded Adler, leaving her floating in a large pool of blood in the bay, as Alonso, allegedly unaware of the fatal collision, continued driving and eventually made it back to his $3.5 million Coral Gables home.

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Witnesses said he didn’t stop or slow down after running over the teen.

The Miami high schooler and ballet dancer was celebrating a friend’s birthday in Key Biscayne’s Nixon Beach when she fatefully lost her grip on the tethered rope.

Video showed Alonso calmly docking the boat just after the accident and making no effort to conceal or clean anything on the vessel, his lawyers argued.

The 78-year-old was charged on April 28 with two misdemeanor charges for careless operation of a vessel, with officials citing Alonso for infractions of US Coast Guard Rule #5 — failing to keep proper look-out, and Rule #2  — failing in responsibility as a boat operator, Florida Fish and Wildlife announced.

He forfeited the Boston Whaler to FFW investigators and has been fully cooperative with the probe, his lawyer previously stated.

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“He’s a good man, and he is devastated by what has happened,” a lawyer for Alonso said last May.

Richard Hartley, 31, who captained the boat that Adler was wakeboarding off of, was also charged with the incident.

He faces a charge of careless operation of a vessel on four counts of violations of Coast Guard navigation rules, including Rules 2 and 5, as well as Rule 7, Risk of Collision, and Rule 8, Action to Avoid Collision, the FWC said.

Adler was remembered as a talented and passionate dancer whose “magnetism radiated on the stage, where she belonged and thrived,” according to her obituary.

“You were taken from us way too soon, and the world has been robbed of all the things you could have achieved,” her father Matthew Adler wrote in an emotional letter that was read at the funeral.