Woman killed by speeding boat while diving off Little Palm Island

A speeding boat struck and killed a diver off Little Palm Island on Friday, a fatal crash in the Lower Florida Keys that has put shared-water safety back under a harsh spotlight. The Monroe County Sheriff’s Office said the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission took over the investigation, and officials had not said whether the boater would face charges.

Miami Herald later identified the woman as Jocelyn Brown, a 27-year-old Key West woman, and said she was diving near Big Pine Key around 11 a.m. when the boat hit her. Deputies said Brown had a dive flag up, the signal meant to warn boaters that people are in the water. In a county where reef access, dive tourism and daily boating all share the same lanes, that detail has made the crash especially painful for the local dive community.

FWC says divers-down flags are required by law whenever divers are in the water. When a flag is displayed, boaters in the vicinity must give 100 feet of clearance in rivers, inlets or navigation channels and 300 feet in all other waterways. The agency also urges boaters and divers to keep 360-degree awareness and follow divers-down flag regulations, advice it repeated in a July 17, 2024 safety reminder.

Monroe County’s Marine Resources Office says the Florida Keys’ waters are regulated by a mix of state statutes, federal laws and county and city codes. The county says it maintains more than 300 channel markers, 38 marker chains and 251 regulatory markers across 24 boating regulatory zones, a measure of how crowded and managed the water is from the Lower Keys through Key West.

The killing comes in a county already heavy with marine traffic. FWC’s 2024 boating accident statistics show that 59% of reportable boating accidents happened in 10 Florida counties, underscoring how quickly risk concentrates in busy coastal waters. In Monroe County, where divers, charter captains and private boaters often move through the same narrow channels, Brown’s death is likely to intensify scrutiny of dive-zone compliance and whether enforcement needs to get tougher.