Fishing captain finds human leg floating in Crandon Marina, and police look into mystery
A charter fishing captain made a gruesome discovery returning from catching bait off Key Biscayne — a severed human leg.
Now police are investigating who it belongs to and whether it could be from a man missing since two boats crashed into each other near the same area a week earlier.
“It’s possible it’s associated with the boat crash, but we have not confirmed that,” said Officer Ronald Washington, spokesman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, which is investigating the crash and, for now, the leg.
Wylie Berg, 22, captain of Jillybird Charters docked at Rickenbacker Marina on Virginia Key, was driving his boat into the Crandon Park Marina on Key Biscayne around 4:30 p.m. Monday to deliver some bait fish he caught to a charter boat crew docked there.
As he slowly piloted his 31-foot contender toward the docks, he noticed something floating in the water. As he got closer, he realized it was a leg.
“I couldn’t believe what I saw,” Berg said Tuesday.
He called 911, and when Miami-Dade police arrived on boats, he helped them recover the body part.
“It was a little strange. I was pretty disgusted,” he said.
Berg said the leg appeared to belong to a white man. It was severed below the knee, and the foot was bare.
Washington said Fish and Wildlife delivered the leg to the Miami-Dade medical examiner’s office to try to determine the identity.
Meanwhile, a Yorba Linda, California, man remains missing after a boat on which he was a passenger collided with another vessel in Bear Cut Channel off Key Biscayne the night of Jan. 4.
Five other people on the boat were taken to Ryder Trauma Center at Jackson Memorial Hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, as was the only person on the other boat, according to an FWC incident report.
But, Spencer McClain Sheridan, 33, was ejected from the 18-foot Robalo center console and hasn’t been seen since.
The U.S. Coast Guard and several other agencies ended the search Thursday. The agency said it used a helicopter, two cutters and several patrol boats to search an area covering 1,200 square miles before ending the operation.
