Two injured as car plummets from valet ramp at Riviera Country Club in Coral Gables
Two people were taken to the hospital after a car fell from an elevated valet circle ramp in Coral Gables Friday afternoon.
WSVN showed aerial footage of a crumpled white sedan on the ground near some dumpsters on the grounds of the Riviera Country Club on Blue Road. The white car’s hood was smashed in and the airbags were deployed.
“Approximately about 1:15, we received a 911 call that a car had fallen off a garage,” Coral Gables Police spokeswoman Kelly Denham said in a statement. “When officers responded to Riviera Country Club, they found that a vehicle had landed on its roof. They found an elderly female driving, age about 92, and a female passenger.”
According to the TV station, one victim went to Jackson Memorial and the other to Baptist’s Doctors Hospital. Police believe the driver accidentally pressed the accelerator instead of the brake.
In an internal letter sent Friday, Club Manager Mark Snure identified the driver as Joanne Monnin, a longtime member of the club. Monnin, he wrote, “drove her car through the top wall on the valet circle where it landed upside down directly in front of the entry to the Cart Barn. Fortunately, no one was badly injured.”
The Cadillac hit a golf cart when it landed upside down on the grounds, according to WSVN. No one was in the parked cart.
Two club members and three Riviera golf staffers pulled Monnin and her assistant out of the car, Snure wrote. Monnin, he said, was taken to Jackson’s trauma center and her assistant to nearby Doctors Hospital in the Gables.
The WSVN video shows a wide shot of the club’s grounds, where people were seen swimming in one of the two pools with a water slide. The rebuilt and renovated club’s grounds were reopened in 2019.
A call to the 97-year-old country club’s corporate office went unreturned Friday.
This story was originally published August 27, 2021 at 9:17 PM.
