CORAL GABLES, FLA. (WSVN) - In the wake of the fatal boating accident that took Ella Adler’s life, another South Florida family is sharing their grief and message on boat safety.
“I looked at my phone and I had a text from a cousin of mine, it was as if the wind just got completely sucked out of me and sucked out of the room just thinking ‘Oh my God, here’s another tragedy,'” said Andy. “His daughter was a classmate with Ella at Ransom Everglades School.”
Andy and Melissa Fernandez received the news on Mother’s Day. It was another holiday, and another teenage girl that was killed in a boating crash.
They lost their 17-year-old daughter Lucy on Labor Day weekend in 2022 when the boat she was on slammed into a channel marker. She and several others were thrown into the water. Lucy drowned.
She had only been two weeks into her senior year at Our Lady of Lourdes Academy.
Lucy’s parents have a deep understanding of how Ella Adler’s loss will hit her school community, her faith community, and especially her family.
They say both of these incidents were senseless, avoidable tragedies.
“I’m angry that this had to happen again,” said Melissa.
“What was really hurting was just thinking about the Adler family and what they were going through,” said Andy.
Like Adler, Fernandez’s daughter was also attending a birthday celebration on the water. It is an activity Lucy enjoyed with her family, but will never be the same.
“You think of how happy she always was when she was there and I want to imagine that, in those moments leading up to it, she was in pure bliss and felt nothing, that’s how we want to picture it,” said Melissa.
In their immeasurable grief, the family has tried to work for the greater good and set up the Lucy Fernandez Foundation to promote boating safety.
“I’ve had Andy take me a couple of times to the channel marker to see and have a moment there,” said Melissa. “We’re the ones making bad choices and we have an opportunity to make it different and protect our children in a different way.”
Losing their firstborn, their only daughter, has meant navigating a pain that is now a part of their lives.
“There aren’t any words that we can tell them, or that anybody told us that will help,” said Andy. “I think what I can share with them is that the pain is not going to go away, you just got to learn to live with the pain.”
If you would like to learn more about the Lucy Fernandez Foundation, click here.
Copyright 2025 Sunbeam Television Corp. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.