Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Captain accused of drunken boating in crash
APompanoBeachmanhasbeen jailed on charges from a drunken boating crash that left at 27-yearold man dead.
But Dean Michael Sealey wasn’t taken into custody when the boat crash happened a month ago at Haulover Inlet in MiamiDade. Rather, he was arrested last Wednesday when authorities say he got drunk at a Fort Lauderdale hotel bar.
The 53-year-old Pompano Beach man had been sought by authorities since the Sept. 17 crash that killed Zach Forte, who had recently moved to South Florida.
According to his arrest report, Sealey was detained after getting drunk at the Royal Beach
Palace hotel bar, breaking a computer in the hotel’s business center and trying to fight with staff last Tuesday
Witnesses at the hotel saw Sealey broke a computer screen in the hotel’s business center and then threw a remote control at a television screen, damaging it, a police officer wrote in an arrest report. Sealey, confronted by a bartender at the hotel, threw a beer can at the bartender and tried to fight him, but was subdued by the bartender and front desk night manager, police said.
The two held Sealey down until police arrived, who handcuffed the man one officer described as “clearly intoxicated,” with an odor of alcohol on his breath.
In that early morning September crash, Forte was thrown from the boat, although it is not clear how he knew Sealey. A spokeswoman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission did not immediately respond to request for more information.
It took a joint effort from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, U.S. Coast Guard and Miami-Dade Fire Rescue to find his body 12 hours later, according to WPLG-Ch. 10.
Sealey is facing charges of vehicular homicide, boating under the influence of alcohol and leaving the scene of a deadly crash for the September crash, and disorderly conduct and criminal mischief for last week’s hotel mishap.
He is being held at the Broward County jail on $600,000 bond and is wanted by Miami-Dade County, as well, according to court documents.