A Villager facing a charge of DUI manslaughter after a woman’s fatal fall from his golf cart has hired a former prosecutor to defend him.
Richard Allen Keil, 58, of the Village of Rio Ponderosa, this week pleaded not guilty in the case in Sumter County Court. Keil has also retained criminal defense attorney Christopher Klemawesch. Before going into private practice, Klemawesch worked as an assistant state attorney in the Sixth Judicial Circuit, Pinellas County where he tried over 75 cases to juries, including cases involving homicide, hate crimes, sexual battery, weapons charges, and many other areas. He was a member of the Vehicular Homicide Squad, focused on the investigation and prosecution of severe DUI cases involving significant injuries and deaths.
Keil was arrested in the wee hours March 9 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.
Novit had been a passenger in the 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, 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.
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.