By JASON GROTTO and ELAINE DE VALLE
Herald Staff Writers

A boat of Cuban migrants struggling to evade capture met a Coast Guard cutter in a deadly collision late Friday off Hillsboro Inlet in north Broward that threw all 12 refugees into the ocean 10 miles offshore and drowned one.

Before the accident, the Coast Guard says, the migrants fought efforts to apprehend them by throwing debris at the cutter and using a machete to cut a rope that the guardsmen fed into their propeller.

The Coast Guard was carrying the 11 survivors and the drowned woman's body to the U.S. Naval Station at Guantanamo, Cuba, on Saturday. At Guantanamo, investigators will decide whether to send the migrants back home, allow them into the United States or find a third country to accept them.

The Coast Guard says it will investigate the accident, as it does all cases that involve death or injury.

Even as the 11 rescued rafters were on their way to Guantanamo, another group of up to 40 Cubans arrived at Hollywood Beach in what witnesses described as ``an old sailboat.''

The boat was spotted behind the Driftwood Hotel, 2101 South Surf Rd., about 11:30 p.m. Saturday, Hollywood Police said.

Friday night's fatal incident -- coming 10 days after Coast Guardsmen used pepper spray and a fire hose against six Cubans who were attempting to reach shore in Surfside -- renews scrutiny of the Coast Guard's attempts to intercept a surging tide of migrants. The Coast Guard had intercepted 940 Cubans this year through Friday. Under U.S. immigration policy, Cubans are allowed to stay here if they reach dry land, but are sent back if they are picked up at sea.

The Surfside incident sparked demonstrations that disrupted traffic and closed the MacArthur Causeway in Miami-Dade County. On Saturday, police in Miami-Dade and Broward counties braced for similar large protests, although none had occurred by late evening.

In this case, officials say the collision occurred as the migrants in a 25-foot motorized wooden boat refused an order to stop and attempted to elude the Coast Guard in the darkness.

The Coast Guard cutter Point Glass intercepted the boat about 10 p.m. Guardsmen tried twice to provide the migrants with life jackets, which were refused, the agency said.

According to the Coast Guard, the migrants cut the mast off their boat and threw debris at the cutter. One waved a machete.

Members of the cutter crew tried to foul the propeller of the small boat by feeding a rope into it, but one of the migrants cut the line with a machete. The guardsmen then tried to stall the small boat's engine with a fire hose, but that also failed.

Then the migrants' boat cut across the bow of the cutter.

``The cutter tried to back off the vessel when it looked like a collision was possible,'' said Coast Guard spokesman Lt. Ron LaBrec. ``But we were unable to avoid it.''

Searched for 12 hours

The collision knocked the 12 Cubans into the water. The Coast Guard picked up 11. They initially believed two were missing -- a woman and a young boy. But interviews with survivors later confirmed that only the woman was missing.

Over the next 12 hours, Coast Guard crews searched a 600-square-mile area off the coast, finally locating the woman's body at 10:30 a.m. off Jupiter Inlet, almost 45 miles north of the collision site.

Federal authorities declined to identify the drowned woman or any of the survivors.

No statements were available from the survivors.

All were transferred to the cutter Pea Island, which was to take them to Freeport, Bahamas. From there, they were to be taken to Guantanamo.

As the search for the woman continued, officials from the Coast Guard, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service and the State Department tried to decide how to handle the situation.

The Border Patrol sent agents to interview the survivors in order to determine if smugglers were involved.

``Right now, our preliminary investigation points to a cooperative venture between the people on the vessel,'' said Dan Geoghegan, assistant chief of the Miami district. ``It does not appear smugglers were involved.''

However, Geoghegan and immigration service spokesman Russell Bergeron said the INS has not ruled out that possibility.

Police work overtime

Meanwhile, Miami-Dade and Broward police departments put off-duty officers on call in case protests broke out.

``We've had police officers there [at the Miami Beach Coast Guard station] since early this morning,'' Miami Beach Sgt. Samuel Gam said late Saturday afternoon. ``The day shift has been held over and we are still out there now.

``We definitely do not want a repeat of what occurred before,'' he said, referring to the demonstration of more than 1,000 Cuban exiles and others who blocked access to the MacArthur Causeway for hours after watching the June 29 Surfside incident on television.

Broward officials played down the precautions they were taking in anticipation of possible demonstrations.

However, several sheriff's deputies and police officers were stationed outside the Coast Guard's Fort Lauderdale station at the John U. Lloyd Beach State Recreation Area. The Point Glass is stationed there.

By late Saturday afternoon, people who had heard of the Hillsboro Inlet collision were upset, but many believed it was an accident.

``It is a lamentable tragedy and we ask the citizenry to maintain calm and not to react until we know all the details,'' said Norman del Valle, a leader of the Democracy Movement organization, which sponsored a flotilla Saturday to commemorate the deaths of 41 people on July 13, 1994, when Cuban patrol boats sank their vessel as it attempted to head for the United States.

Faulting Castro

Del Valle said he did not want people to react as they did on June 29.

``We should remember that the only one who is at fault here is Fidel Castro because if there was no repression in Cuba, these Cubans would never risk their lives at sea.''

Because someone died, and because the survivors were thrown violently into the water, INS spokesman Bergeron said the migrants will be taken to Guantanamo ``for health and humanitarian reasons.''

It is INS policy that migrants picked up at sea usually remain on Coast Guard vessels until their status is determined. But officials are making an exception in this case, Bergeron said.

``Right now, the INS is working with the State Department in order to contact the Cuban government so we can identify the victim and her next of kin,'' Bergeron said. ``Once that has been established, we will transport the body to her relatives.''

In an earlier incident Friday, the Coast Guard said it saved five people from a damaged boat -- and possibly from each other -- and brought them to a hospital in Key West.

A ship in the Florida Straits received a distress signal about 7:20 p.m. and the Miami Coast Guard office dispatched a C-130 plane to the area, where pilots found a damaged 26-foot boat close to the northern Cuban coast.

The five on board -- two Cubans, two Indians and a Pakistani -- were all either unconscious or incoherent and there were signs of a violent struggle on the boat, Geoghegan said .

``The story I'm hearing is that the Indians and the Pakistani contracted with the Cubans in Cuba to go fishing and that some physical confrontation ensued on the vessel,'' Geoghegan said. ``I think the Cubans were instructed to take them to the United States, they didn't want to and they all got into a fight.''

Also contributing to this report were Herald staff writer David Green and El Nuevo Herald staff writer Fernando Almanzar.