Uh oh...hideous rare insect makes U.S. debut at Miami airport

A U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CPB) agricultural inspector checking a shipment of cut flowers from South Africa a week or so ago at the Miami International Airport discovered this nasty-looking bug.  It was hustled over to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Miami Plant Inspection Station, where it was identified as Uttaris pallidipennis Stal, a member of the Hemiptera family -- aphids, cicadas, leaf hoppers and such -- which is found only in South Africa.  According to the CPB, this is the first time this particular insect has been "intercepted" in the U.S.

Florida, of course, is awash in non-native species, some of which are wreaking havoc with the ecosystem here.  (we're talkin' to you, Burmese Python,)  A CPB spokesman told the Miami Herald that officials do not know enough about this particular insect yet to determine how harmful it could be.  "Whenever you have an insect that is not native," said the official, "there is really no way to tell how much damage it can do until it actually gets out and starts to eat.''

Miami cat killer strikes again

Whoever is killing cats in a Miami community struck again Wednesday, the Miami Herald reports, with five mutilated cats found dead.

Police say they have evidence to file charges in 15 cases, but detectives are awaiting the results of necropsies before deciding on other cases, the Herald reports.That's in addition to the five found dead on Wednesday.

More from the Herald:

Helen Shafner was returning to bed early Wednesday when she heard the first scream.

''It was a real loud, horrible scream,'' said Shafner, 82, a Palmetto Bay resident for 12 years. ``I kinda figured out what was going on...I knew it was different than a cat fight.''

Shafner looked outside her bedroom window to her front yard, but could see nothing in the darkness. She was scared, she said, and did not dare venture outside.

''And when I went out to get my paper, there they were. Two of them on the lawn,'' she said.

Shafner called the scene ''gruesome.''

It reminded her of why she now keeps her own cat, named Kitty, inside sometimes. ``Luckily, she was inside last night.''

In Miami, a good Samaritan turns bad, steals car

A woman who was having trouble filling the tank of her Jeep Cherokee on Wednesday asked a young man for some help. He dutifully obliged, filling the tank -- then stealing her car.

The woman called police, the Miami Herald reports, who spotted the vehicle speeding along Northwest Eighth Street. They tried to pull it over, but the car kept going, hitting six cars before the driver jumped out and ran away.

An officer found the bad Samaritan hiding in a Dumpster in the 600 block of Northwest 24th Avenue. The victim later identified the man as the robber.

Yairon Rodriguez, 31, was charged with grand theft auto, reckless driving, eluding a police officer and driving with a suspended license.

Miami horror show: serial cat trophy killings

Residents of a couple of quiet Miami neighborhoods awoke last week to a scene straight out of a horror movie: mutilated cats left on display in the yards of family homes, the Miami Herald reports. Some were skinned, others sliced across the stomach.

About 20 cats have been reported maimed and killed. "'We take a very dim view of this,'' said police detective Bobby Williams."We find it very disturbing an individual would do something like this to defenseless animals.''

It's not clear if all the Cutler Bay and Palmetto Bay cases are linked.

'The Humane Society of the United States has posted a $2,500 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction in what they said were "serial cat killings.''

''This is particularly gruesome and egregious,'' said Jennifer Hobgood, the organization's Florida director. 'If you speak to the investigator, the phrase he used is that the cats are being left like `little trophies.' ''

A police report from a woman who found two cats in her yard in the 19700 block of Whispering Pines Road, the Herald reports, describes two mutilated cats: "Both were sliced open and one was posed.''

Barbara Wiesinger, 68, said she found the bodies of several cats in her Cutler Bay neighborhood before finding her 15-year-old calico, named Cami, a few houses away. Gone was part of the cat's face.

"Your mind can't wrap around the why of it, or even the how,'' she said. "How did they get them and what are they going to do now.''

Another day, another alligator removal story

According to the Miami Herald, an 8-footer was removed from a canal Friday morning.  The canal was near a middle school.  A bunch of school kids looking over the canal rail attracted the attention of a couple of Miami Fire Rescue officials driving by.  They summoned the fire rescue department's "Venom Response Team."

Since the unfortunate alligator already had a rope around its neck, extracting the reptile was not that difficult for the specially trained responders.  The story notes that the response team "has recently undergone training on how best to safely catch and secure alligators."

It's 4/20: Do you know where your pot is?

A Miami-Dade police officer pulled over a white pick-up truck on the Florida Turnpike today and made an unexpected discovery on: an enormous amount of marijuana plants, the Miami Herald reports.

Witnesses said the amount taken by police was estimated at half a million dollars.

Police said the truck's driver escaped before police could arrest him.

Police stopped the truck after a piece of styrofoam fell out and hit a car. But as the officer walked out of his car, a strong odor of marijuana hit him, police said.

The reason: several long and bushy marijuana trees were laying on the back of the truck.

The driver of the truck jumped out and ran away as the officer walked towards the man's truck, police said.

It apparently was just a coincidence that the discovery was made on April 20, or 4/20, or "420,'' generally regarded as code for pot smoking.

Woman accused of faking kidnapping, blow-torching son

A Miami woman is accused of staging her own kidnapping outside a Wal Mart, abducting her teenage son and standing by as her accomplice held a blow torch to the boy's leg to convince his father their ransom demand was serious, the Miami Herald reports.

 Alejandra Arriaza, 39, of Miami, faces a federal kidnapping charge along with her boyfriend, Angel Ponce, 37, and his nephew, Joel Boza, 29.

A criminal complaint says Arriaza hatched the scheme to get money from her ex-husband. She took her
17-year-old son to a South Florida Wal-Mart Thursday to buy an iPhone and left the door to her white Honda Civic unlocked, allowing a masked Ponce to slip into the back seat with a fake handgun and thick tape. After Arriaza and her son returned to the car, Ponce sat up, announced the kidnapping and covered the teenager's eyes with the tape.

He ordered Arriaza to drive to Ponce's trailer in the 1600 block of Southwest 127th Court in Miami, where the boy was tied to a chair with shrink wrap and tape. ''His head was wrapped in thick tape from the top of his head down to the tip of his nose,'' the complaint states.

The bound child was then placed inside a closet overnight. At one point a blow torch was placed close enough to the phone so the father could hear it. Finally, Boza placed the lit blow torch near the boy's leg, just close enough to burn the hair off.

Finally, on Friday evening, investigators tracked the location of the trailer and rescued the boy and, presumably, his mother.

Ponce was arrested first and quickly revealed that Arriaza was in on the whole abduction, but the son was not. Arriaza later corroborated his account, according to the complaint.

Miami airport worker allegedly sold fake tickets

MIAMI (AP) -- A Miami International Airport worker is accusing of selling passengers fake airline tickets to Latin America.

Julio Amores worked for the luggage-wrapping business Secure Wrap. He was arrested Tuesday on charges of grand theft and organized scheme to defraud.

Miami-Dade Police say the 55-year-old told travelers passing through the terminals that he also worked for various airlines and could buy tickets at bargain rates. The passengers paid cash or with checks, and Amores would give them bogus confirmation numbers for fake electronic tickets.

Investigators say Amores did buy one ticket, but it was a one-way fare and stranded a woman in Colombia.

Amores was expected to post bond Wednesday. Jail records did not show whether he was represented by an attorney.

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Information from: The Miami Herald, http://www.herald.com

© 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Would-be "graffiti artist" falls from sign, is killed by truck

A 28-year old man who fell 20 feet from a roadside sign catwalk onto the Palmetto Expressway was promptly hit and killed by a truck at 0-dark-30 Friday.   "We did find a spray bottle … spray can next to the victim," a Florida Highway Patrol told NBC6.com. "He may have been up there tagging the sign."  The TV station said the sign had been graffiti-ed before, but was cleaned up and repainted.  Several signs along I-95 in Miami were similarly vandalized earlier in the week.  Fencing and barbed wired erected to keep people away from the signs has not worked, according to the TV station.  (Image:  National Institutes of Health)

Miami couple's insurance canceled for 4 cent underpayment

NBC6.net reports that a Miami couple's insurance was canceled by Blue Cross and Blue Shield because they underpaid their premium by 4 cents.  According to the TV station, Linda and John Chace received a letter last October from Ceridian, which handles the insurer's billing, informing them their monthly premium had increased from $508.55 to $588.59 -- a bump of $80.04.   Linda Chace said she mailed off a check for $80, but failed to notice the extra 4 cents.  She said Blue Cross mailed the check back, informing the couple that they had failed to pay their premium in full and that their policy was canceled.

“I’m sorry you were terminated because there was a 4 cents difference in October that you didn't pay," the cancellation letter explained, according to Linda Chace.

Linda Chase recently lost her job as an accountant.  John Chace, a guitar teacher, has had limited success in finding work.  “How many other people has this happened to?” John Chase said to the TV station. “How many hundreds or thousands of families get the same sort of error because it was so minor?"

The Chaces made numerous calls to both Ceridian and Blue Cross, and were basically told sorry, can't be fixed.  But once the TV station started investigating -- as is so often the case -- the situation was quickly rectified.  NBC6 received a letter from the insurer that said, “The payment system did not recognize the partial payment made by Mrs. Chace and automatically sent out the cancellation letter pursuant to Florida statutes. We are pleased to reinstate Mrs. Chace's coverage."