A Villager who drank at the Fenney Grill has been fined in the wake of an accident in which his girlfriend was thrown from a golf cart he was driving.
Ronald Joseph Szarley, 69, who lives at 1017 Boone Court on the Historic Side of The Villages, pleaded no contest to a charge of reckless driving last week in Sumter County Court. He has been ordered to pay $483.40 in fines and court costs.
A warrant was issued for his arrest after his girlfriend was airlifted Oct. 17 to Ocala Regional Medical Center when she was thrown from a golf cart Szarley was driving at Fenney Way and Penney Lane, near the Blue Heron Recreation Center in the Village of Fenney. She had suffered a head injury.
Szarley admitted he had made an abrupt turn and the woman was thrown from the golf cart and “hit her head on the asphalt,” according to an arrest affidavit from the Wildwood Police Department.
Szarley said he and his girlfriend had been at the Fenney Grill at about 3 p.m. where he drank four Corona beers, but did not eat. At about 5 p.m. he received a call “from a friend that recently returned from Michigan and wanted to have drinks with them,” the affidavit said. They got into the golf cart and headed out.
Szarley struggled through field sobriety exercises. He consented to a blood draw. He said that if the blood draw showed he was over the legal limit, he would turn himself in, the affidavit said. He was not immediately taken into custody. His golf cart was towed from the scene.
“I wish it was me that was hurt, not (her),” he told police.
