{"id":373342,"date":"2026-08-17T02:08:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-17T02:08:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/373342\/"},"modified":"2026-08-17T02:08:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-17T02:08:09","slug":"police-investigate-alleged-drunk-boating-crash-in-fort-lauderdale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/373342\/","title":{"rendered":"Police investigate alleged drunk boating crash in Fort Lauderdale"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text text--small text--normal text--primary\">Published:\u00a0August 16, 2026 at 9:24 PM<\/p>\n<p class=\"text text--small text--normal text--primary\">Updated:\u00a0August 16, 2026 at 9:58 PM<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. \u2014 Wild scenes unfolded on the water in Fort Lauderdale early Saturday morning after police say a man allegedly driving a boat under the influence crashed into other boats at Bahia Mar Dock.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">The incident happened around 1:30 a.m. after Fort Lauderdale police received a call about a drunk boater crashing into other boats.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Video captured witnesses watching as the boat eventually became tied up to a portion of the dock. In the video, one of the men appears to point a gun at the boater.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">It\u2019s not clear how many boats the man crashed into.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Video also shows damage to the boat he was driving, including shattered glass and portions of the hull torn apart.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Fort Lauderdale police\u2019s DUI officer was part of the investigation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Police identified the man as Michael Bender, who was initially reported as being charged with boating under the influence.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">However, Bender is not currently in custody.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">In another clip, people on board can be seen sitting while everyone involved waits for police to arrive.<\/p>\n<p>\ud83c\udfe0 News From Your Neighborhood<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph b-article-body__copyright\">Copyright 2026 by WPLG Local10.com &#8211; All rights reserved.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" alt=\"Brett Knese\" class=\"c-image\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/https:\/\/author-service-images-prod-us-east-1.publishing.aws.arc.pub\/wplginc\/d3b079d0-0444-499b-8cb7-.jpeg\"  width=\"100\" height=\"100\"\/>Brett Knese<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph b-author-bio__author-description\">Brett Knese joined the Local 10 News team as a general assignment reporter in March 2025.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published:\u00a0August 16, 2026 at 9:24 PM Updated:\u00a0August 16, 2026 at 9:58 PM FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. \u2014 Wild scenes&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":373343,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[249,251,250],"class_list":["post-373342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fort-lauderdale","tag-fort-lauderdale","tag-fort-lauderdale-headlines","tag-fort-lauderdale-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=373342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373342\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/373343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}