Carnival Elation Altercation Between 2 Passengers

[CanadianCruiser]

September 20, 2007

Local grocer Scott Boney hospitalized

Scott Boney, a second-generation grocer and owner of the Windmill Farms store in San Diego's Del Cerro neighborhood, was in critical condition yesterday at a La Jolla hospital after suffering a serious head injury while on board a cruise ship off Baja California.

tBoney, 50, who had been a passenger on Carnival cruise line's Elation, was airlifted Tuesday morning by a private ambulance service from Ensenada, Mexico, to Scripps Memorial Hospital.

Carnival said in a written statement yesterday that a 50-year-old male passenger aboard the Elation fell down a flight of stairs about 11:30 p.m. Monday during an “altercation” with another male passenger.

Neither passenger was identified by the cruise line.

The 2,052-passenger ship, which had set sail from San Diego on a five-day cruise to Cabo San Lucas, was diverted to Ensenada after the incident.

“Per normal protocol, all proper authorities were notified of the incident, including the FBI,” Carnival said.

FBI officials in San Diego were not available for comment last night.

Windmill Farms spokeswoman Aimee Cebulski Miller said family members would not comment on the situation.

Once Boney arrived in Ensenada, he was aided by the Chula Vista-based Binational Emergency Medical Care Committee, said Celia G. Diaz, the group's executive director. The nonprofit group annually evacuates more than 300 Americans from Mexico for medical emergencies.

Boney belongs to a prominent family of grocers who have operated stores in the Southwest since the 1940s.

After learning the grocery business from their father, Henry Boney, Scott Boney and his older brothers, Steve and Stan, began opening a series of hybrid natural-traditional groceries in the 1970s that morphed into the Henry's Marketplace chain by the late 1990s.

The brothers sold Henry's to Wild Oats in 1999.

Scott Boney re-entered the family business in 2003 when he opened Windmill Farms, with self-service bins of granola and grains, shelves stacked with protein powders and much of the floor space reserved for fresh produce, including organics.

The other brothers also remain in the business. Stan Boney is chairman and chief executive officer of the Phoenix-based Sprouts Farmers Market chain, and Steve Boney owns Boney's store in Oceanside.

Miller described Scott Boney as an “extremely active guy, very outdoorsy.” He and his wife, Betsy, have two children.

“He loves to go to the desert, mountains and beach,” Miller said. “The family loves to travel, so they've done all sorts of things. Cruising is one of them.”

Miller asked well-wishers to deliver expressions of support for Boney and his family to the Windmill Farms store, 6386 Del Cerro Blvd., instead of to the hospital.