Keys commissioner denies abusing wife, but some are calling for him to step down
The Florida Keys politician arrested this week in Hialeah on a charge of domestic-violence battery is denying abuse allegations by his wife and children, a newspaper reported Friday.
“All I’m going to say is it’s an accusation only,” Monroe County Commissioner Eddie Martinez said in a text to the Key West Citizen.
Meanwhile, the majority of his colleagues on the dais, all Republicans, told the Miami Herald they think he should step down.
“I personally think he needs to resign. He needs time to get his life in order. And the stress of public office doesn’t add to his ability to accomplish this right now,” said Mayor David Rice, whose district includes the Middle Keys city of Marathon.
The calls for Martinez’s ouster following his arrest are the latest in the opaque story of a little-known Republican candidate who barely campaigned yet managed to narrowly defeat the well-known Democratic incumbent representing Key West, the Keys’ only solidly blue district. Martinez’s opponent in the November race, Heather Carruthers, has a pending lawsuit against him, arguing he never lived in the district that he now represents.
In a February deposition in that case, his stepdaughter said Martinez and his wife, her mother, lived in Key Largo — about 90 miles north of Key West — until after he won the election.
“It was clear to my fiancé and me that Eddie had no intention to move to Key West during the campaign because he did not think he was going to win,” Natalie Guerra said during the deposition. “There was no packing beforehand. They did not start looking for a place to live in Key West until after the election.”
Martinez was arrested at a Hialeah home Tuesday and jailed on a $1,500 bond. He was released Wednesday evening after posting bond, according to WPLG-ABC 10. While walking to a vehicle, Martinez told a reporter he did not hit his wife.
Asked if he would step down, he said, “No.”
In court filings, Martinez said in February 2020 he moved out of a rental on Key Haven, about one mile from the island of Key West, into a space on Truman Avenue in Key West, where he stayed in the rear apartment in the back of what was his office at the time.
He said his wife moved from the Key Haven home to Key Largo while their daughters went to stay with their grandmother in Hialeah, where Martinez is from.
The Truman Avenue building was listed on Martinez’s campaignfinance forms as his address throughout the campaign. On Nov. 5, 2020 — two days after the election — he said he moved to a condo on Simonton Street in Key West.
At the Simonton Street building Friday, attorney Richard Klitenick, who owns the condos beneath where Martinez said he lived, said he saw Martinez moving into the upstairs condo soon after the 2020 election.
But Klitenick said Martinez hasn’t been there in “months and months,” and that the condo has been rented multiple times since.
The owner of the condo is listed in the Monroe County Property Appraiser’s records as Gary the Carpenter Construction, which is owned by Gary Burchfield.
Burchfield couldn’t be reached for comments Friday.
Hialeah police arrested Martinez after responding to a 911 call about a man with post-traumatic stress disorder being “very violent inside the home,” according to the report.
His wife, Maria Martinez, said her husband threw an empty pill bottle into her face during a rage and that this was only his latest incident of domestic violence.
She said her husband has struggled with prescription pain medication abuse for some time and when he runs out of pills he “turns extremely violent,” police said.
Martinez told the Citizen that he did not tell police he has a problem with prescription pain medication, contradicting the arrest report that said he told officers he struggles with the pills.
Martinez, 46, has not responded to text messages from FLKeysNews.com/Miami Herald. But the Citizen reported that he plans to attend a county commission meeting set for 9 a.m. on Dec. 8 at the Murray E. Nelson Government Center in Key Largo.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office knows about the arrest, his press secretary Christina Pushaw said Thursday.
“Our legal team is reviewing the available information,” Pushaw wrote in an email. “Per Florida law and our constitution, the governor does have the authority to suspend elected officials who are charged with crimes. This is not automatic or immediate. The governor can use his discretion and make that decision after reviewing the facts of the case.”
In other cases where officials have been charged with crimes, the governor has ordered suspensions after reviewing the facts of the cases, Pushaw said.
She gave a recent example of a Destin councilwoman suspended by a governor’s order on Nov. 4 after she was charged in October with felony battery on a lawenforcement officer. Prebble Ramswell also was charged with official misconduct, another felony.
Martinez’s wife told police she “has dealt with the domestic violence for years but failed to report the incidents, hoping he would quit his prescription drug abuse,” according to the arrest report.
In a text to the Citizen, Eddie Martinez said he does not need drug treatment, “as I only take what is prescribed by my medical doctor. That is it. No more no less.”
He texted “what is really happening is a woman scorn[ed] that is not stupid,” the Citizen reported. “And I will leave it at that. The truth will reveal its self in the end.”
Martinez ran unsuccessfully to be the Key Largo representative of the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District board in 2014 and for the Key Largo Wastewater Treatment District board in 2016.
He won his first election in November 2020 to represent part of Key
West, defeating the incumbent Carruthers in a race so close it required a mandatory recount.
Carruthers questioned Martinez’s residency after the election and has filed a lawsuit calling for his removal and for her to be reinstalled as commissioner.
On Friday, Carruthers said she has known since before the 2020 election that Martinez “cannot adequately represent the people of District 3 as he is not an engaged resident or responsible member of the Keys community.”
“The current allegations of drug abuse and domestic violence have only reinforced my beliefs,” Carruthers said.
Two of the couple’s daughters said they saw Martinez throw the pill bottle that struck their mother’s face, Hialeah police reported.
The 13-year-old said her father threw it “like a baseball,” and she went to hide inside a bathroom to call 911.
She also said Martinez struggles with prescription drug abuse and regularly becomes violent, having physically and emotionally abused her and her sisters in the past.
After his arrest, Martinez denied he hit his wife “but refused to say his daughters were lying,” according to the report.
All but one of Martinez’s four colleagues on the Monroe Board of County Commissioners said Friday it’s time for him to resign.
“You need to be 100% aware of what you’re doing all of the time and in all places, and it is apparent he is not able to do this because of his health condition,” Commissioner Michelle Coldiron, who represents the Lower Keys, said. She added that she is
prepared to ask DeSantis to step in if Martinez doesn’t resign.
The newest member of the commission, Holly Raschein, who was appointed by DeSantis to represent the Upper Keys after then-Commissioner Mike Forster died of COVID-19, said Friday that Martinez should resign for the sake of his health and his family’s well-being.
“As a new colleague of Commissioner Martinez, I’m saddened and deeply troubled by these recent events. As a woman, mother and former legislator who sponsored and passed legislation to protect victims of domestic violence, I take these criminal charges very seriously,” Raschein, a former state representative, said in a text to the Miami Herald.
“I believe that those who do so forfeit their right to the public trust,” she said. “There is no place for this in Hialeah — or Monroe County. I sincerely hope Commissioner Martinez will take the appropriate action to prioritize his recovery and to protect his wife and others in his life. I will pray for them.”
Only Mayor Pro Tem Craig Cates, who represents the other county district in Key West, was not willing to call on Martinez to resign.
“I know it’s difficult. I know he wants to serve, but what’s best for him and his family, that’s a decision that’s up to him to make,” Cates said.