Clearwater ferry crash kills one, injures 10 near Memorial Causeway

# Clearwater ferry crash kills one, injures 10 near Memorial Causeway

*Event date: 2025-04-27*

A ferry trip in Clearwater ended in death and injury on Sunday evening when the Clearwater Ferry collided with a privately owned boat near the Memorial Causeway bridge. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission later identified the person who died as Jose Castro, 41, of Palm Harbor. City officials said 10 other people were hurt, and six of the injured were listed as trauma alerts.

The ferry had 44 people on board, while the private vessel carried six, according to the reporting from ABC Action News. The collision happened as people were heading home after the final night of the 17-day Sugar Sand Festival, a weekend that had drawn heavy traffic to the water taxi route. Two of the trauma-alert patients were flown to BayCare Health with what officials described as minor injuries, and at least one passenger later said the impact left her worried enough to seek a hospital check while pregnant.

The same report says the captain of the private boat, Jeffry Knight, left the scene and traveled to the Belleair Boat Ramp after the collision. The ferry captain was identified as Dennis Kimerer. As of Monday, officials had not filed charges, and FWC said everyone had been accounted for, meaning investigators were no longer searching for missing passengers.

That does not make the case simple. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission and the U.S. Coast Guard were still gathering surveillance video and witness accounts, while Clearwater police and fire crews continued to work the scene after the 8:43 p.m. call. PSTA and Clearwater Ferry said they were cooperating and called the death heartbreaking. In incidents like this, the first questions are often the hardest to answer: how fast were the vessels moving, which side of the channel each boat occupied, and what exactly happened in the seconds before impact? None of that is settled in the supplied report.

For Clearwater, the crash was disruptive because it hit on a night when the ferry was carrying festivalgoers back to shore. For investigators, that matters because a crowded, routine crossing can become a multi-agency inquiry in minutes. For the family of Jose Castro, and for the passengers who walked away shaken but alive, the facts are already enough to mark the night as a tragedy.

The route itself is a short one, which is what made the collision so startling for passengers: people expect a crossing to be routine, not a place where a private boat can meet a ferry in a fatal impact. With no charges filed yet and no public explanation for why the boats came together, the story remains centered on the human cost and the unanswered operational questions.

The crash also landed in a waterfront corridor where the ferry functions as everyday transit, not a novelty ride, which is why investigators will likely focus on operating conditions as much as on the collision itself. The combination of a festival crowd, a private boat that left the scene and a fatal result has already turned this into a question of marine safety and accountability, not only of one night’s tragedy.