Drug suspect hops off of boat ramp, then struggles with Keys deputy underwater
A Florida Keys man suspected of selling drugs from inside a popular Key Largo bar early Thursday morning hopped off a boat ramp to get away from a deputy, and the two struggled submerged under water before he was eventually arrested, according to a police report.
Enrique Blasco, 59, is in Monroe County jail on charges of possession with intent to sell cocaine, evidence tampering, smuggling drugs into a detention facility and resisting arrest. His bond information was not immediately available.
Deputies received a tip around 2 a.m. that Blasco was inside the Caribbean Club bar at mile marker 104 on the bay side of Key Largo selling cocaine. The tip came from the Largo Police Department in Pinellas County, which got a call from inside the bar, according to Deputy Joel Torres’ report.
Torres went inside and saw Blasco, who he said has an “extensive” criminal history, and asked him to step outside because the music was too loud to talk. However, as soon as the two exited the bar, Blasco ran away from Torres, “clearly substantiating the tip that criminal activity was afoot,” the Monroe County deputy wrote in his report.
Blasco jumped off a boat ramp on the bar property into the bay. Torres went in after him, and the two fought underwater, according to the report.
“I could feel Blasco rummaging through his pockets frantically until he came back up for air,” Torres said.
Torres and tree other deputies pulled Blasco out of the water and placed him in handcuffs.
The deputies looked in the water and saw a clear plastic sandwich bag floating on the surface. Torres wen back in the water and grabbed it. Inside the bag were five smaller plastic bags containing what turned out to be cocaine, according to the report.
The deputies searched Blasco’s clothes and found another small bag of cocaine, Torres said. And, when he was booked into Plantation Key jail, detention deputies found another small plastic bag in his front pocket, according to the report.
Torres said his department-issued equipment “sustained significant and irreparable damage” from being submerged in the saltwater during the struggle. He wrote in his report that the cost of the gear was around $3,000.
The Caribbean Club is a bar popular among locals and tourists alike, and is supposedly the inspiration for the hotel where the 1948 classic John Huston film Key Largo, starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, was set.
The bar still bills itself as the movie’s film location, but historians say, save for some exterior scenes, the bulk of Key Largo was shot on a Warner Brothers studio lot in California.
Key Largo is home to piece of memorabilia from another John Huston-directed Bogart film, however. The African Queen boat, from the eponymously named 1951 film ,is docked at the Holiday Inn Key Largo at mile marker 100.
