Mended Net Result reopens for business

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Louie Larsen and Jeffrey Maida have been hard at work preparing to reopen. — Photo by Ralph Stewart

Days to go before Good Friday, fish lovers had reason to celebrate. Net Result owner Louie Larsen said the fish market will open Wednesday. The take-out section will open Thursday.

“We have pieced it together,” Mr. Larsen told The Times in a telephone call Tuesday morning. “We just had the health inspection and got the okay to open both sides.”

Over the past week and half, Mr. Larsen, right-hand man and partner Jeffrey Maida, members of the extended Larsen family, employees and friends, and a crew from Oceanside Fire and Water Damage Repairs were hard at work repairing the damage that followed an early Saturday morning car crash on April 5 that left the interior of the market littered with debris from smashed walls and display cases.

Mr. Larsen said much of the equipment destroyed in the accident, including the lobster tank, counters and display case were custom made and will take months to replace.

“I have to wait for a new lobster system,” Mr. Larsen said, “I just happened to have a lobster tank in my backyard that will suffice for now, but it is definitely not a replacement.”

Mr. Larsen said the fish market crew did the best they can with what they had.  The end result — fresh lobsters, fish sandwiches, and fresh fish for sale — will remain the same.

“I don’t think the customers will notice it,” he said. “More like the workers and I will be the ones that notice the inconvenience.”

Mr. Larsen said he plans to post enlarged photos on the temporary wall that show the car imbedded in the building. “People that don’t know what happened, they’ll just have to go look at our wall of shame and find out,” he said.

According to Tisbury Police, Abraham Torres Rendon, 25, of Edgartown, was at the wheel of a 2004 Toyota 4Runner heading from Oak Bluffs to Vineyard Haven when he drove the SUV into the exterior of the fish market about 1:40 am on the morning of April 5.

Mr. Rendon was arrested and charged with operating under the influence, marked lanes violations, speeding, reckless operation of a motor vehicle, leaving the scene of an accident with property damage, destruction of property, and resisting arrest. He also offered the arresting officer $200 to let him go free. That netted him an additional charge of attempted bribery.

Mr. Rendon was released from the Dukes County Jail that same day, April 5, on $500 bail.

The Saturday morning accident caught The Net Result fully stocked for the busy weekend and Lent.

Insulation, shattered glass, wood framing and vehicle parts littered the floor when Mr. Larsen arrived. The car struck a fiberglass lobster tank weighing thousands of pounds filled with lobsters for the weekend and pushed it into a stainless steel counter, bending the counter. The counter crushed the end of a 12-foot custom fish case and shattered the display glass. The impact sent the case into a wall freezer, breaking the glass door.

Unfortunately, lobsters rescued from the damaged holding tank, which amounted to about 700 pounds, had to be thrown out. The tank was found to be full of broken glass from the windows and front display case, which made them unsafe for consumption.

Damage from the accident was estimated at more than $250,000.