DANIA BEACH, Fla. — Kellie Williams, an experienced swimmer and American Airlines flight attendant who was born in California and lived in South Florida, died while snorkeling off Broward County. She was 30.
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Investigators told her father, who lives in California, that a boat had struck her off Dania Beach, hours before her body washed ashore on Wednesday night in Hollywood Beach.
Williams, who had recently gotten married, was also a scuba diver who loved the ocean and had lived near it in South Florida for about four years, according to her grieving father.
Williams vanished on Wednesday while swimming in the area of Dr. Von D. Mizell-Eula Johnson State Park at 6503 North Ocean Drive, according to the Hollywood Police Department.
Hollywood police officers responded to a 911 call at about 8 p.m. on Wednesday after witnesses saw her body, east of the North Boardwalk and south of the Hollywood North Beach Park.
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“We saw two fishermen and then what looked like a body on the beach … We saw them drag her up … it was disheartening,” Gianluca Fiore, a witness, told Local 10 News on Thursday morning.
There were Hollywood police officers on and off the beach late into the night, near North Surf Road, between New Mexico and Thomas streets.
Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation investigators worked with Hollywood detectives. The Broward Medical Examiner’s Office conducted an autopsy and reported Williams’s cause of death as “blunt force injuries.”
Detectives asked anyone with information about the case to call 954-764-4357 or 954-967-4567, or Broward County Crime Stoppers at 954-493-8477 to remain anonymous.
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