A 16-year-old Carroll County girl hurt her head yesterday after the powerboat she was riding ran aground on Rhode River near Edgewater, authorities said.
Alexis Michele Paul of Mt. Airy was flown to the Maryland Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore. Battalion Chief Matthew Tobia, a county Fire Department spokesman, said her injuries were serious, but not life-threatening.
Sgt. Ken Turner, spokesman for the state Natural Resources Police, said Matthew Loiacono, 42, of Owings was piloting a 37-foot yacht near High Island about 1:35 p.m. when he struck a sand bar about 2,500 feet from the shoreline of the Smithsonian Research Center. He said Ms. Paul - one of six people on the yacht - fell forward and hit her head on the boat's cabin.
The Coast Guard was the first to respond to the wreck, but the water was too shallow to reach the stranded vessel. The rescuers needed the help of a couple of Good Samaritans on water skis to reach the grounded boat and begin providing first aid, said Petty Officer 3rd Class Ayla Stevens, a Coast Guard spokesman.
She also said civilian members of the Coast Guard Auxiliary ferried county paramedics through the shallow waters. A county fire boat managed to take Ms. Paul to shore, where she met the state police helicopter that took her to the hospital.
"It was a big inter-agency cooperation," said Petty Officer Stevens.
Natural Resources Police are investigating, but Sgt. Turner said alcohol was not a factor in the wreck.
Sgt. Turner described High Island as an "eroded island" and the sandbar as "unforgiving."
"If you don't know where you're going you can run into it very easily - and that is what this person did," he said, noting Ms. Paul was "standing at the wrong place at the wrong time."
