Marathon Man Accused Of Butchering Sea Turtle
MIAMI (CBSMiami) - A Marathon man is accused of mutilating a turtle and harvesting out of season lobster and undersized stone crab claws.
Last Thursday, a Monroe County Sheriff's deputy received a tip that a man on a small skiff had placed a cooler in some mangroves at the south end of the Ohio-Missouri Bridge.
The deputy went the location and found the cooler which contained a large number of lobster tails, stone crab claws and a turtle that had been butchered for its meat.
The deputy then waited for someone to pick the cooler up. A short time later, a Toyota Camry pulled in to the bridge parking area and backed up toward the trail where the cooler was hidden.
The sheriff's office said 37-year old Serguei Perez-Perdomo of Marathon got out of the car and put the cooler in the trunk. As the deputy followed the Camry north on U.S. 1, he radioed ahead to another deputy asking him to stop the car once it entered Marathon.
The vehicle was stopped and Perez-Perdomo was asked about the cooler he'd placed in his trunk. Perez-Perdomo admitted it was his, along with the contents.
Inside the cooler was the butchered turtle meat, along with 212 lobster tails, all of them out of season. 145 of them were undersized. There were 12 stone crab claws, two of which were undersized.
Perez-Perdomo was placed under arrest. He was booked into jail on multiple marine violations.
