Man dies after diving Florida Keys shipwreck, Monroe sheriff’s office says
An Inverness man is dead after losing consciousness during a scuba dive on a Key West shipwreck Saturday, the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office said.
Nicholas James Strazzulla, 50, passed out after descending between 150 to 200 feet to the USNS Hoyt S. Vandenberg, a former missile tracking ship intentionally sunk about seven miles south of Key West in 2009 as an artificial reef.
He was brought back to the boat he was diving from, and other people in the group began CPR immediately, said Adam Linhardt, spokesman for the sheriff’s office.
Paramedics took him to the Lower Keys Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead, Linhardt said. Detectives do not suspect foul play, and the cause of his death is pending autopsy results, Lihardt added.
Strazzulla, a certified dive instructor, was vacationing in the Keys, and hitting popular dive sites, including the Spiegel Grove, another intentionally-sunken ship off Key Largo, according to his Facbook page.
His employer, Floridivers, a dive shop in Inverness, said in a statement on its social media that Strazzulla “always had a smile on his face and never met a stranger. He was loved and will be missed greatly. Please keep his family and his friends in your prayers.”
The company also shared a statement from Strazzulla’s wife Tammy Strazzulla saying her husband “was doing what he loved to do when he was called home by the Lord.”
