Airboat crash lawsuits settled in confidential agreement

COLLIER COUNTY, Fla. (WINK)—Three lawsuits filed after a December 2024 airboat crash in the Everglades that injured 33 people have been settled.

The settlements are confidential, so the exact details are not known. The three lawsuits were filed by airboat riders, all asking for more than $50,000 in damages.

Each lawsuit stated the airboat rider walked away from the crash in pain, scarred, and paying for medical expenses because of negligence from Wooten's Airboat Tours and the boat captains. The crash happened when two boats collided during what was supposed to be a sightseeing tour for a youth football team visiting from California.

Days after the 2024 crash, WINK News spoke with Alssya Windom. She was seven months pregnant at the time. 

"I remember is seeing the boat, and then waking up and I'm hang- my back is hanging over the railing of the boat," Windom said. "It was like a movie, something you see in a movie."

Windom walked away with a healthy baby and a broken tailbone.

"Our boat got turned around from the way we were coming from, and that other boat was, like, on top of our boat," Windom said. "I remember the boat on top of, people, and people falling in the water. Kids are in the water screaming, blood everywhere, mud everywhere."

Windom settled her lawsuit in February, around the same time as Richard and Megan Brown and Roxanne Brooks. Video from the day of the boat crash showed families being pulled from the water, bleeding.

"We were never expecting, you know, anything like that to her," Windom said. "Some spots are wide open where you can see everything, and some spots are kind of like one ways where only one boat can fit and, you know, very steep curves. We come around a steep curve, and at that moment, we see another boat coming around that curve as well. And by the time we saw it, that was the last thing I remember."

Crushed boats were pulled from the water. Windom was flown to a hospital, having to leave her children behind.

"I don't know where I'm going," Windom said. "I don't know who he's with. I don't have a phone. My phone was lost in the wreckage."

Under the terms of the settlement for Roxanne Brooks and Richard and Megan Brown, the plaintiffs cannot speak to the media or disclose information related to the settlement. 

WINK News reached out to all the plaintiffs' lawyers and the lawyer for Wooten's Airboat Tours, but has not heard back.

"If they do continue operating, that they really take the safety of, you know, their customers into consideration," Windom said. "I don't think anyone else should have to experience what we went through."