A Villager facing a charge of DUI manslaughter was freed from jail Monday as more details were learned about the woman who fatally fell from his golf cart.
Richard Allen Keil, 58, of the Village of Rio Ponderosa, was released shortly before 1 p.m. Monday from the Sumter County Detention Center after posting $50,000 bond.
He was arrested in the wee hours Sunday morning after 60-year-old Kelly Novit of Norridge, Ill. fell from his golf cart. Novit’s mother lives on the Historic Side of The Villages. It appears that Novit has been spending a great deal of time in Florida’s Friendliest Hometown.
She had been a passenger in a golf cart when Keil, who was reportedly impaired, was traveling on San Marino Drive, not far from his home, when he swerved to avoid hitting a parked car at about 1 a.m. Sunday, according to the Florida Highway Patrol.
When Keil swerved, Novit fell from the golf cart and hit her head on the asphalt pavement. Sumter County sheriff’s deputies were the first to arrive on the scene, and they began performing CPR on Novit. She was initially transported by ambulance to UF Health Spanish Plaines Hospital in The Villages. She was in critical condition and it was deemed necessary to transfer her to the trauma unit at Ocala Regional Medical Center. She died there at 4:42 a.m. Sunday.
Keil remained at the scene on San Marino Drive where an investigator spotted “a pool of blood on the pavement,” the report said. Keil’s golf cart had “a cooler with four empty Michelob beer cans and a case of Michelob Ultra beer.” Keil admitted he had consumed three cans of beer and was at a bar prior to the accident.
He performed poorly in field sobriety exercises and provided breath samples that registered .092 and .081 blood alcohol content.
Keil lost his wife in December. She had worked for 30 years for the State of New Jersey, before she and her husband moved to Florida. They bought their home in the Village of Rio Ponderosa in 2020.
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