CLEARWATER -- The search is over, at least for the moment, for the rhesus macaque running through Clearwater.
Officials are waiting for a tip from the public before they resume the search for the monkey, last seen Tuesday night at a strip mall.
ST.PETERSBURG -- An injured coyote that has eluded officials for more than six weeks has been spotted again.
Continue reading "Wily coyote eludes capture in St. Petersburg, Seminole" »
VALRICO -- Deputies and animal control officers found a dog that had bitten two people and had escaped with a deputy's bullet in him, according to the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office.
Cheryle Peterson, 61, was walking to her mailbox at 1006 Meadow Lane when her neighbor's two pit bull mix dogs bit her in the leg, said Vida Morgan, a spokeswoman for the Sheriff's Office. Peterson called Animal Services as the dogs found their next victim.
Shelia Ashcraft, 43, was attacked while walking down Meadow Lane and was taken to Brandon Regional Medical Center with unknown injuries.
At the home of the dogs' owner, Deputy James Paes shot a dog in the hind leg when it charged him. An animal control officer aimed a tranquilizer dart at the dog.
Both dogs initially got away, but authorities caught the animals and they are now in the custody of animal control.
Robbyn Mitchell, Times Staff Writer
*
TAMPA -- An ex-Krispy Kreme driver swiped a delivery truck shortly before noon Tuesday, ran into a pedestrian and drove away, police say.
According to the arrest reports, Shelton Denard Reed, 38, of 307 E. Clinton St., took a white Krispy Kreme box truck from the parking lot, hit a pedestrian at Yukon St. and Central Ave. and fled.
He was stopped by Tampa Police at E. Fowler Ave and Gillette Ave and given a field sobriety test and was arrested after failing, the report said. He also refused a Breathalyzer.
Reed was charged with driving under the influence with serious bodily injury, grand theft auto and leaving the scene. He's being held at Orient Road Jail on $6,000 bail.
There was no information available about the injured pedestrian.
-- Robbyn Mitchell, Times Staff Writer
TAMPA — A Tampa couple says an oxtail dinner turned out to have one not-so-appetizing ingredient: a human finger, nail and all.
Connie Edwards, 48, told Tampa police she discovered the finger after nearly finishing her meal, agency spokeswoman Laura McElroy said. Edwards reported that she had shopped at the House of Meats at 502 E Sligh Ave.
One of the store owners, Josh Eubank, called the report “a hoax.” “It’s impossible they got it here,” he said. “Everybody here has got all their fingers.”
Edwards told police she bought the meat in mid-June. When no one at the store said they had lost a finger, Edwards and her boyfriend, Tommy Lee Smith, 43, brought the finger to the Police Department -- on a fork.
“It was the middle finger, a tip of the finger from that first knuckle up,” McElroy said. “It pretty much grossed out everybody there.”
The Hillsborough County Medical Examiner’s Office confirmed on Aug. 22 that the finger was human. McElroy said no fingerprints or DNA evidence survived the cooking process.
Smith, the boyfriend, has a criminal record, including a one-year prison sentence in 2006 on charges of defrauding a financial business and grand theft, according to state records. He served prison time in the 1990s on drug and aggravated battery charges.
Reached at home, Smith referred calls to his lawyer but said he was not a liar and that his past has nothing to do with this.
“I’m unemployed. I’m a hard-working man. I don’t have to lie about anything,” he said.
The family’s lawyer, Thomas Parnell, said the oxtail meat had been cooked at home in a big pot. When the finger was retrieved, it was hollow, with just a bit of bone fragment left inside, according to medical examiner documents. Parnell said the finger’s tissue probably seeped into the rest of the meal.
Parnell said the family members would get blood tests and then he would he would determine what damages they should seek.
Edwards is a certified nursing assistant, according to state records. She told Tampa police that she is a “support coach” at Merrill Gardens retirement community in Lutz. A manager there refused to comment.
Police said the case is closed on their end. They investigated all the meat packing companies that supply the House of Meats but found that no employees had reported any fingers missing.
“It was a bit of a wild goose chase,” McElroy said. “Our first step was to see where it came from forensically, and that was a dead end. Then we tried to do the legwork on where that oxtail came from, and that was a dead end as well.”
Police found no evidence that the finger came from House of Meats.
“It’s just their word,” she said of the couple. The case will remain closed unless police are provided more information about the finger’s origins.
--Kim Wilmath and Saundra Amrhein, Times Staff Writers
TAMPA -- Twice the Escalade vanished. Twice the owner reported it stolen. But now, more than 10 months after its charred hulk was found in the woods of Odessa, its owner has been charged with arson and insurance fraud.
According to the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office, this is how it unfolded:
On May 11, 2007, Peter David Padilla (left) reported his 2007 Cadillac Escalade stolen from his home at 6102 Webb Road. Deputies used the vehicle's OnStar tracking system to find it in Pasco County. It was at the home of one of Padilla's acquaintances. Padilla recanted his story.
On October 17, 2007, Padilla reported the Escalade stolen from 7609 La Mesita Court in the Town and Country Apartments. The Escalade was found the next day in some woods at 15140 Rails Road in Odessa, burned and abandoned.
Padilla filed an insurance claim for more than $38,000. It was paid. The insurance company also paid Padilla $638 for a rental car.
On July 28, a man named Jason Barnes came forward and said he and Padilla had conspired to commit insurance fraud by ditching the Escalade.
Padilla, 49, was arrested Wednesday. His charges included arson, burning to defraud an insurer, false report to law enforcement, grand theft and criminal mischief. He was held without bail Thursday at the Orient Road Jail.
--Thomas Lake, Times Staff Writer
[Photo: Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office]
ST. PETERSBURG -- A St. Petersburg man received a surprise Sunday afternoon when he found what appeared to be a lung floating in a canal behind his home in the Old Northeast.
When he found the organ, the man, a research biologist, fished out the object and called the St. Petersburg Police Department. The medical examiner came and picked up the object, according to police officials.
Eariler today, police officials informed him that the "lung" was not human.
It is still unclear what type of animal the organ came from and whether or not it was actually a lung.
--Nicole Hutcheson, Times Staff Writer
[Special to the Times]
CLEARWATER -- In less than four minutes, illusionist Criss Angel will remove the stainless-steel, police-issued Smith & Wesson handcuffs, pick locks on two doors, climb three flights of stairs, then grab a ladder hanging from a helicopter that will whisk him 1,000 feet into the air before the building below him implodes.
At least, that's the plan.
If he does Wednesday night's stunt in 3 minutes and 30 seconds or less, he’ll be okay. One second longer and the helicopter won’t get high enough, possibly resulting in the Las Vegas-based escape artist's death, Angel said in a telephone interview this afternoon.
"When 4,400 tons of cement come barreling to Earth, my mission is not to be under that," he told reporters during a conference call. "Because it’s going to come down whether I’m in it or not."
Angel's fans say he can pull off.
And he better. His show, Mindfreak, will be broadcast live for the first time ever Wednesday night on the A&E network. Millions across the world will be watching on TV, and possibly 10,000 could be on Clearwater Beach where the stunt will be performed on the sixth floor of the nine-story Spyglass Resort.
So the pressure is on for this post-modern Harry Houdini, who has walked on water, disappeared in front of a charging, raging Mexican bull, and even set himself on fire. To prepare for the challenge, he has practiced at the St. Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport and at the vacant Spyglass itself.
Angel, 40, said the 10 p.m. event will be one of his most dangerous yet.
And live or die, it’s going to be his last.
If he succeeds in this "biggest and baddest" of escapes, he says he’ll take fewer risks and perform more magic instead.
The reason?
He doesn’t want to worry his mother anymore.
-- Mike Donila, Times Staff Writer
[AP Photo, Jim Damaske, Times files]
Nick Bollea -- the most famous inmate at the Pinellas County Jail and perhaps the jail's most famous inmate ever -- turns 18 on Sunday.
While the jail is not holding a birthday celebration, Bollea will be moved from juvenile confinement to the central division, where he'll live in a wide-open "direct-supervision" housing area with up to 71 other adult men, sheriff's spokeswoman Marianne Pasha said today.
He will keep the same job, working in the inmate property section of the jail, according to Pasha.
On May 9, Bollea, the son of former professional wrestler Hulk Hogan, was sentenced to eight months in jail after pleading no contest to reckless driving with serious bodily injury.
His work at the jail has taken days off his sentence, Pasha said, and he'll likely be released in October. That means Bollea's jail time will probably end up being closer to five months.
Jonathan Abel, Times staff writer
CLEARWATER -- It's official: Illusionist Criss Angel will try to escape from a Clearwater Beach hotel about to be blown up for a live broadcast of his Mindfreak cable television show at 10 p.m. July 30.
The cable television network A&E announced the decision today. The Times reported on July 11 that Angel and A&E were in discussions with Clearwater officials to stage the stunt at the old Spyglass Resort, known for its 100-foot-tall mural of a hot-air balloon.
The one-hour episode will be the first time the show has been broadcast live, according to A&E.
Continue reading "Criss Angel to do live 'Mindfreak' July 30 on Clearwater Beach" »
CLEARWATER -- Las Vegas-based illusionist Criss Angel will pull off a spectacular escape on Clearwater Beach at the end of the month as long as the needed permits are in place, and a city official says that should happen.
"If they get the permits, he's coming," Clearwater city spokesman Doug Matthews said. "I'm fairly confident we're moving forward with this, and I don't see any reason why it won't happen."
Needed are a demolition permit from the city and an asbestos abatement permit from Pinellas County.
Angel's representatives recently approached the city of Clearwater about staging an escape during the demolition of the 9-story Spyglass Resort hotel building on July 30. The vacant hotel is being razed so make room for a large hotel.
"He's going to be in the building when they do the demolition, and somehow he magically escapes to the roof and is whisked off into the darkness," Matthews said after city officials met today with representatives of Angel's hit cable TV show, Criss Angel Mindfreak, which is shown on the A&E network.
Mike Donila, Times staff writer
The trial of a Clearwater grandmother arrested after a dispute with a police officer in a McDonald's drive-through lane began today with a courtroom dispute over a surveillance video.
Click here to read the full story.
CLEARWATER -- The latest point of contention in the fractious divorce between Terry and Linda Bollea concerns the couple's one-time plan to buy a $4.2-million condominium in Las Vegas.
In July 2005, the couple put down a $840,000 deposit on the condo. But the couple did not close on the purchase, as scheduled, this spring.
This spring, Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Judge George Greer signed an order requiring Terry Bollea, better known as former professional wrestler Hulk Hogan, to close on the property. But Bollea's attorney said during a court hearing this morning that was before he saw an appraisal of the property. Now Terry Bollea believes it would be a bad investment.
"They don't have the kind of wealth that you would think," said Terry Bollea's attorney, Ann Kerr. She did say, however, what kind of wealth the couple does have.
Continue reading "Terry and Linda Bollea wrangle over Las Vegas condo in divorce court" »
TAMPA -- Tampa Fire Rescue workers were summoned to a house on N Lincoln Avenue, where a man reported being exposed to an unknown gas inside of the travel trailer he had just bought about two weeks ago.
The man was treated by paramedics and sent to St. Joseph's Hospital. The incident began when Daniel Green, 59, had heard the carbon monoxide alarm sounding inside the 40-foot Winnebago and went inside to investigate.
The gas inside made him sick and he called 911. A Tampa Fire Marshal's investigator could not find any obvious source of carbon monoxide since there was no generator running, according to a Tampa Fire Rescue report.
Tampa Fire Rescue Hazmat team members were called, and they went into the vehicle in protective gear. Their carbon monoxide meter didn't register any gas, but rescuers on scene reported a strong, sulfur-like odor from the vehicle. Investigators concluded the waste tank was probably full and needed attention.
"The vehicle was left for the owner to take care of," Tampa Fire Captain Bill Wade said in a statement.
Justin George, Times staff writer
LEALMAN -- Investigators say it appears a pile of debris caught fire in a utility room in the corner of the residence at 4550 39th St. N Friday. The residence is a total loss, said Marianne Pasha, spokeswoman for the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office.
She also said that shortly after arrest of the home’s resident, Stephen Blackwell, 40, earlier this month, detectives sent what appears to be a human skull found in the home to a lab in Gainesville for further examination.
An associate of Blackwell’s discovered it stored in a box in the closet. It is may have been used for academic purposes. Blackwell is in Pinellas County Jail on drug charges.
The bomb squad was called when deputies learned that the house may have held explosive substances. They found none, but certain chemicals were found, Pasha said.
-- Mariana Minaya, Times Staff Writer
BROOKSVILLE — A 49-year-old Citrus County man has been charged with first-degree murder, accused of killing his own mother.
Donald C. Wing, Jr., was apprehended Friday in Georgia, after Citrus County Sheriff’s Office detectives issued a warrant for his arrest.
While final autopsy results have not yet been released, detectives have "ample evidence" to believe the woman found dead last week in northwest Hernando County is 74-year-old Janet R. Wing, said spokeswoman Heather Yates.
Mrs. Wing was reported missing last Tuesday from her Beverly Hills home. Based on physical evidence, police said she was likely killed there and later moved to the patch of woods off Atlanta Ave. near U.S. 19, where her body was found the next day.
She lived both in Florida and with relatives in other states, but her son ''apparently was living with her in Citrus County,'' Yates said. The cause of death appeared to be homicide, with evidence of trauma to the upper body, according to a preliminary autopsy.
What brought Wing from Florida to Georgia isn’t known, but police say he was hospitalized in Thomas County, Ga., prior to his arrest there.
A spokeswoman for the Thomas County Sheriff’s Office said Wing remained in custody Saturday, awaiting transport back to Florida to face charges.
-- Tom Marshall, Times Staff Writer
A defense attorney argued today for the dismissal of the case against a 76-year-old woman arrested after arguing with a police officer over whether she blocked the drive-through lane at McDonald's while waiting for an order of french fries.
But County Judge Patrick Caddell did not rule immediately on the defense motion during a pretrial hearing this morning. He said he would do that later.
Jean Merola of Clearwater is scheduled to go on trial July 10. She faces an $88 fine on a city charge of obstructing a right of way on Jan. 17.
Continue reading "Defense attorney: Dismiss french fry case" »
Hulk Hogan is scheduled to appear on Larry King Live at 9 p.m. tonight to discuss the case against his son, Nick Bollea, now serving an eight-month jail sentence, according to CNN.
The cable news network's Web site is promoting King's interview with Hogan, whose real name is Terry Bollea, as Hogan's first interview since Nick Bollea was jailed for injuring John Graziano.
Graziano, 23, has been in a semiconscious state since Aug. 26, when Bollea's speeding Toyota Supra slammed into a tree. Bollea pleaded no contest May 9 to reckless driving with serious bodily injury.
CNN's Web site also is touting "shocking jailhouse tapes." At the request of a news organization, the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office released 26 hours of recorded conversation between Nick Bollea and his family. Graziano's father recently said he was outraged by the conversations.
In one, Nick's mother, Linda Bollea, said she knew John better than his own mother did.
"She's not sad. She's just acting angry like she just wants the money," Linda Bollea said of John's mother, Debbie Graziano. "John never meant anything to her or Ed. It's just sad because I really appreciated you kids, and I just miss John. I miss you, too. She's not suffering. I am. I have the loss."
Graziano's father, Ed Graziano, has said he found those comments offensive and said his wife "lives for her children."
In another recorded call, Nick Bollea told his father that John was "a negative person."
Bollea also asked his father to line up a reality television show about him getting out of jail and back on his feet.
"I want to do it where I'll make the most money," he said.
Hulk Hogan said he'd produce the show and make his son an owner.
Bollea's attorneys have since gone to court to block the release of Nick's conversations with his parents.
The Times' ongoing coverage - "Fame, fast cars, fate" - is here.
-- Times Staff Writer
LUTZ -- For more than a month, Kimberly and Alan Whitehill watched and worried over the depression in their back yard. It was an inch deep in April, then knee deep earlier this week.
"We knew something was going to happen," said Kimberly Whitehill, 38.
They found out what at 5 a.m. Thursday.
"You know when you hear the shuttle, the sonic boom?" she said. "That's what it sounded like."
The Whitehills discovered a sinkhole 30-feet wide and nearly as deep. The corner of their back porch dangled over one side. The shed housing their printing business dangled over the other. PVC irrigation pipes, which had laced their back yard, pointed into the watery bottom.
The first load of fill dirt arrived around 4:45 Friday. The dump truck driver peered into the sinkhole.
"Holy s---!" she shouted. "We need help, don't we."
-- Bill Coats, Times Staff Writer
Stephanie Ragusa, the Hillsborough County teacher accused of having sex with several middle school students, has written a letter from the Hillsborough County Jail to 17-year-old Nick Bollea at the Pinellas County Jail.
Pinellas deputies intercepted the letter, recognized Ragusa's name, and the return address of the Falkenburg Road jail and contacted Hillsborough sheriff's officials, Pinellas sheriff's spokeswoman Cecilia Barreda said today.
Pinellas deputies intercepted the letter, which Bollea hadn't received, because they weren't sure if Ragusa was allowed to have contact with a minor, Barreda said.
Bollea was given a copy of the letter, which Pinellas sheriff's officials say they will not release because it's Bollea's property.
Kevin Hayslett, one of Bollea's attorneys, didn't remember the contents of the letter but said he anticipates the Hillsborough County State Attorney will file a motion to prevent Ragusa from contacting Bollea.
"Nick has no desire to be Stephanie Ragusa's pen pal," Hayslett said.
J.D. Callaway, a spokesman for the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office, confirmed that Ragusa sent a letter to Bollea June 2.
"She's only restricted from contacting witnesses or the victims in her pending criminal cases," he said. "At this time it was completely legal for her to send a letter to Nick Bollea."
Col. David Parrish, the agency's detention commander, said inmate correspondence is not generally logged or monitored. Although Hillsborough inmates are not supposed to write other Hillsborough inmates, there are no restrictions about an inmate writing to another inmate at a different facility.
"I've got 3,700 inmates and I don't know who's writing to whom," he said. "We don't censor outgoing mail, we just check incoming mail with regard to contraband."
-- Tamara El-Khoury, Times Staff Writer
Continue reading "Officials: teacher in student sex case writes Nick Bollea" »
PALM HARBOR -- Instead of grumbling and driving away after getting two traffic tickets, authorities say a Safety Harbor man tried to ram the cruisers of the deputies who stopped him.
Anthony Louis Lanni (left), 30, was arrested early this morning after trying to hit a Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office patrol car, sheriff's spokeswoman Cecilia Barreda said.
Barreda said Lanni was initially stopped at Lake St. George Drive and Wesleyan Drive in Palm Harbor after running a stop sign. He did not stop immediately and was verbally abusive when the deputies made contact.
After getting his tickets, Lanni drove to a side road and waited, deputies said. When the two deputies started to move, he drove his 1984 BMW into the intersection in an attempt to hit the patrol car, officials said. The deputy swerved to avoid Lanni’s car. Lanni then started to walk away from the deputy and the car before he was taken to the ground and arrested.
Lanni’s girlfriend, Brittni Glover, said he is a devoted father and a hard worker. She said he wouldn’t try to hit the cruiser; the gears on the old BMW stick and cause the car to jerk forward.
“He’s a good person,” she said. “He’s not some crazy maniac or anything.”
It’s not Lanni’s first ticket, according to court records. His driver’s license has been suspended more than 10 times for not paying traffic tickets on time and has gone to driving school four times in the last 7 years.
Lanni was charged with reckless driving, resisting arrest and aggravated assault with a motor vehicle in addition to tickets for running a stop sign and an obstructed license plate. He was being held at the Pinellas County Jail today in lieu of $5,400 bail.
Jackie Alexander, Times staff writer
[Pinellas Country Sheriff's Office]
Anthony James David, the 31-year-old Hernando County man who was accused last October of posing as a doctor at Tampa General Hospital, was arrested again Saturday on a charge of unlicensed practice of a health profession.
"The suspect known as Dr. David has been caught committing the same con again," a Tampa Police Department news release said.
David (left) is in the Hernando County jail. Tampa police said they would release further details at a 1 p.m. news conference.
--Thomas Lake, Times Staff Writer
[Hernando County Sheriff's Office]
Tampa -- Remember the mystery man handing out cash at local gas stations?
Morning radio stunt.
Todd Schnitt, host of the MJ Morning show, outed the so-called gas phantom as a show crew member, just as local TV crews arrived at a Shell station on N Dale Mabry Highway and Cypress Avenue.
On the show this morning, Schnitt, scoffing at the notion that handing out cash was a hoax, maintains he was simply spreading good during tough economic times.
"Who cares if its us," he asked.
He said there's $10,000 more to be doled out.
--Casey Cora, Times Staff writer
LAKELAND -- A man whose body was found in a canal Saturday -- guarded by a 7-foot alligator -- drowned, authorities said Sunday. Polk sheriff's officials said they still had not identified the man Sunday. Two fisherman discovered the body, which was without arms, early Saturday. The body was being guarded by a 7-foot female alligator. Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation officers shot the gator, cut it open and found evidence it had been feeding on the body.
No deal and no guilty plea, says a 75-year-old Clearwater woman briefly jailed in January after a confrontation with a police officer at a McDonald's drive-through.
Jean Merola (left) has turned down the state's offer to plead guilty and pay an $88 fine on a charge of violating a city ordinance alleging that she obstructed a right of way.
Instead, she is scheduled to go to trial on July 10.
"I just want my day in court," Merola said outside a Pinellas County courtroom today. To her, the principle at stake -- that she doesn't want to admit guilt when she believes she didn't do anything wrong -- is what's most important.
Continue reading "Trial set in McDonald's french fry arrest" »
The scene last week outside the mobile home where Deborah Palfrey, known as the "D.C. Madam," hanged herself in a storage shed under the carport of her mother's Tarpon Springs home. The mobile home was tucked in the back of the Sun Valley Estates mobile home park. [JIM DAMASKE | Times]
TARPON SPRINGS -- Last week's death of 52-year-old Deborah Jean Palfrey -- the woman known as the 'D.C. Madam' -- has been ruled a suicide by the Pinellas-Pasco Medical Examiners Office, police said today.
Police said they had no reason to believe that Palfrey's death on Thursday was anything but a suicide. Palfrey's body was discovered hanging in a shed beside the home of her mother, Blanche Palfrey, in the Sun Valley Estates mobile home park on U.S. 19.
In suicide notes released by police this morning, Palfrey told her family she regretted leaving them to deal with her death, but was unable to face prison and saw no other way out. She also left a short note saying she was not to be revived or, if found alive, fed under any circumstances.
Continue reading "Police, medical examiner rule 'D.C. Madam's' death a suicide" »
LAKELAND -- The monkeys are still on the loose.
Fifteen monkeys swam across a moat last weekend and escaped the island where Lex Salisbury, the chief executive of Lowry Park Zoo, was keeping them. The people looking for them say recapturing them could take a week. Or more.
Escaping, as it turns out, is what these monkeys do best.
More specifically, these are patas monkeys, the fastest primates on earth, with a top recorded speed of 35 mph. They make Maurice Greene and Michael Johnson look like joggers. Their bodies resemble greyhounds. According to the Web site of the Honolulu Zoo, their reddish coats and white mustaches make them look like grumpy, retired British colonels.
Plus they're smart. One will stand guard, acting as a noisy decoy if necessary, while the rest of the group sprints silently away through the tall grass, the Web site said.
In other words this is delicate.
"You just don't go in there with a bunch of people and stir up the place," Gary Morse, a spokesman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, said Wednesday afternoon. Salisbury is leading the effort to find his monkeys, but the commission is helping out. "It makes it impossible to catch the animals."
Operation Monkeybars, as it is now called, involves the strategic placement of apples, bananas and monkey chow. Also cages. But not all at once. First the monkeys have to get used to finding the food. Then fresh food goes in the cages.
Then, perhaps, for the hungry, swift, cunning, grumpy British colonels, the Florida vacation will end with the snap of a trap door.
--Thomas Lake, Times Staff Writer
[Patas monkey photo from AP Photo]
ST. PETERSBURG -- The 8-foot, 8-inch alligator that became Sandra Frosti's uninvited guest landed the Pinellas County woman on NBC's Today show this morning.
Frosti, 69, left, gained notoriety this week after an alligator appeared in the kitchen of her East Lake condo late Monday.
In an interview with Today host Meredith Viera, above, Frosti recalled the harrowing discovery and subsequent trapping of the gator. She said the trappers asked her to pet the animal before they hauled it off.
"The top is hard, like a rock," she said.
Continue reading "Gator woman on 'Today': 'I can't believe all of this!'" »
[Image courtesy Pinellas County Sheriff's Office]
View more photos
EAST LAKE -- Around 10:30 p.m. Monday, Sandra Frosti heard an intruder bumping around in her kitchen.
Turns out, the noise was made by an 8-foot, 8-inch alligator that had crawled into the 69-year-old's kitchen in Eastlake Woodlands.
The female alligator apparently pushed through a screened panel on the back porch, shouldered its way past a potted ficus tree, then got inside the house through an open rear sliding glass door. Once inside, it crawled through the living room, down the hall and into the kitchen.
When Frosti looked into the kitchen, she saw the beast's head. She called 911 and left the house. Click here for audio of the 911 call.
Continue reading "Worse than cockroaches: Finding an 8-foot gator on your kitchen floor" »
LUTZ -- Authorities are looking for a thief who snatched a tiny puppy with a big price tag -- $1,000 -- from a Lutz pet store Wednesday.
The suspect is a man, 17 to 19 years old, 5 feet 10-inches tall and 150 pounds. He has brown hair and brown eyes and was last seen wearing dark pajama-style pants and a light-colored T-shirt.
The puppy is a 10-week-old tea cup chihuahua that weights 1 pound 8 ounces, has no name and costs $1,000.
The suspect went to the Puppy Love Store, 5933 N Florida Ave., to ask about the puppy Tuesday, and when he returned the next day, he picked up the puppy and ran out the front door, the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office said.
Deputies ask anyone with any information about the theft to call (813) 247-8200 or 1-800-873-8477.
-- Amber Mobley, Times Staff Writer
TAMPA -- On the evening of Feb. 21, a 2-year-old boy suffered head and eye injuries, including massive swelling. Authorities determined that Christopher Todd Pullie, 23, was the only adult watching him at the time of the incident.
According to the Hillsborough Sheriff's Office, Pullie said that while playing, he threw the boy in the air and the boy's head hit the blade of a fan, after which he fell and hit his head again -- this time on a coffee table.
In addition, the boy said Pullie hit him on the head with a bat: a foam T-ball bat with a hard plastic core.
Pullie, of 4115 Chatham Oak St., in the Carrollwood area, was charged with child neglect and aggravated child abuse. He was held Thursday in lieu of $32,500 bail.
Thomas Lake, Times staff writer
LAKELAND -- A 21-year-old Fort Pierce man is accused of nearly killing a child after impregnating her and then forcing a home abortion on her.
Papouche Edmond, left, was arrested Wednesday in Polk County on charges of lewd battery on child under 12, aggravated child abuse, impregnating a minor, aggravated battery and tampering with evidence.
Port St. Lucie police and St. Lucie Sheriff's detectives had been tracking Edmond for months. CrimeStoppers received a tip from south Florida that Edmond was hiding at an address in Lakeland. The U.S. Marshals Tampa Bay Area Fugitive Task Force responded to the home, arresting Edmond on the outstanding warrants.
U.S. Marshals spokesman Marc Howard said Edmond's victim, whose specific age was not available tonight, almost died as a result of the injuries she sustained when he terminated her pregnancy in an attempt to destroy evidence.
Edmond is being held in Polk County without bond and awaits transfer to St. Lucie County.
Rebecca Catalanello, Times staff writer
From the Today show on NBC. Click to enlarge
Previous coverage: Treatment of disabled man attracts national spotlight
The Hillsborough State Attorney's Office is reviewing the Oct. 25 arrest that led to quadriplegic Brian Strerner's booking into the Orient Road Jail in January, but the investigation into the conduct of four suspended sheriff's deputies remains in-house with the sheriff's Internal Affairs department, Assistant State Attorney Pam Bondi said today.
“We don’t just see something on TV and go out and make an arrest,” she said. “We let the Sheriff’s Office complete their internal affairs investigation first. That’s how it’s done in every case.”
Earlier this morning, Sterner told Today show host Meredith Vieira that he wants a personal apology from Hillsborough County Sheriff David Gee for the way he was treated at the jail last month. This afternoon, Gee did just that.
Sterner also said he wants a criminal investigation followed by action from Gov. Charlie Crist's office, and possibly the federal government.
"It's not about one deputy," said Sterner, 32, who flew to New York City on Tuesday to appear this morning on the NBC show. He said he wants more attention paid to the "ridiculous down-pressing of people across the world."
"It's not about race. It's not about a wheelchair," he said. "It can happen to anybody at any time."
Surveillance video footage of a Hillsborough detention deputy dumping the quadriplegic Sterner from a wheelchair blasted across news Web sites and YouTube on Tuesday (watch it here).
Meanwhile, the roommate of the suspended deputy said their house phone has rung nonstop.
"It's not even just in Florida," said Beverly Crecy, who was outside the home, checking the mail. "These calls are from out of state. People calling her 'n-----' and 'fat' and all kinds of stuff. Seven o'clock in the morning and all through the night."
Earlier in the day, a published report suggested that Deputy Charlette Marshall-Jones made her first public comments since the video surfaced. Crecy said the reporter may have spoken to her, but not Marshall-Jones. She said the Sheriff's Office advised Marshall-Jones against making any statements.
Crecy tearfully praised Marshall-Jones' 22 years of service to the Sheriff's Office.
"People run us down in the store trying to give us food and stuff like she's a politician because she is a good deputy," she said. "And she does her job and she's passionate about her job and for them to sully her name the way that they're doing is not right. And I'm not going to give you or anybody else anything that is going to further hurt her. She doesn't deserve this.
"This is the job nobody wants. How many people watching the TV and calling us and passing judgment on us is willing to put that uniform on. We holler obscenities out at them and hate them, but as soon as somebody walks in our yard, we want them to come put their lives on the line for us, people they don't even know. And then this is how they want to treat us? It's not fair."
Three other deputies have been placed on paid administrative leave pending an investigation. One of those deputies is Steve Dickey, 45. Dickey, who has served as president of the Hillsborough Sheriff's Office detention chapter of the West Central Florida Police Benevolent Association, said he didn't see what happened to Sterner.
"All I can tell you is that I was not there when the incident took place. I wasn't in the area. I wasn't there. I wasn't in that part of the jail," he said. "If you've seen the full video, then you see that."
Dickey does not appear in the frames of the video where Sterner is dumped from the wheelchair. Dickey, a thick-framed man with a crew cut, comes into the video as the deputies are putting Sterner back into the wheelchair.
Dickey, who just started his 27th year with the Hillsborough Sheriff's Office, said he couldn't go into more detail about what was said by deputies that day.
"I am not trying to be difficult with this at all, but you have to remember that this is an investigation," he said. "You have to remember that I have a job I have to keep."
In New York, Sterner sat next to his Largo attorney, John Trevena. He said neither he nor his doctor have seen any X-rays since the Jan. 29 fall. Sterner, who is paralyzed from the chest down, said his right side has felt "strange" since the fall.
"I very well could've broken something and I wouldn't even know it," he said.
Jail officials said X-rays taken at a jail medical facility two days after Sterner's fall showed no broken ribs. Vieira, the host, said the Sheriff's Office declined to be interviewed for the show and did not send a written statement.
Trevena said he spoke with Sheriff Gee late Tuesday. He said Gee apologized and intends to refer the case to the Hillsborough County State's Attorney's Office for review.
"Having something like this captured on videotape really sends the message home that we really need to
take close look at what's going in our jails and prisons," Trevena said. "I think these types of things happened fairly routinely, and it's only when you have unequivocal evidence like this that something can be done about it."
At the end of the interview, Sterner said he was going to the national stage as a platform for change. He hopes "this negative way of dealing with life and people will change."
"Just like Rodney King got beat in the street and I got thrown out of my wheelchair, it happens to people
every day," he said. "It's just that now there's cameras that catch it."
"And you plan to fight it?" Vieira asks.
Said Sterner: "Damn right."
Sterner is also scheduled to tell his story on Inside Edition and CNN.
- Casey Cora, Rodney Thrash and Abbie VanSickle, Times staff writers
TEMPLE TERRACE -- Police are trying to sniff out a shoplifter who got away with $1,900 in perfume from a local pharmacy.
The thief (left) walked into the CVS Pharmacy, 110 Bullard Parkway, on Jan. 21 about 9 p.m., talking on his cell phone and browsing before picking up a basket and filling it with perfume products, authorities say.
"Some of the perfume is locked up in a case," said Temple Terrace police Detective Patricia Stanton. "But some of the gift sets were not locked up, and to my understanding some of them were pretty high dollar."
He then walked out of the store with the basket and got into a late-model, black four-dour sedan with a license plate number beginning with X81.
Stanton said she thinks the products will be resold, but she doesn't know where.
"This is the second time this has happened at this particular store," she said. "The first time was on Jan. 8, but we're not aware if it was the same suspect."
Police ask anyone with information to call (813) 989-7090.
- Robbyn Mitchell, Times staff writer
CLEARWATER -- Linda Bollea asked a judge this week to stop her estranged husband, reality TV star and former professional wrestler Hulk Hogan, from spending $10-million that she says came when the family sold a home in Florida in August.
In a court filing, Linda Bollea also accuses Hogan, whose real name is Terry Bollea, of trying to trick her into signing a post-nuptial agreement and other "legal shenanigans."
Mrs. Bollea's new pleadings accuse Terry Bollea and his lawyers of missing deadlines to turn over financial records. Her attorneys also contend that Terry Bollea enlisted Tampa attorney Les Barnett in an attempt to trick her into signing a post-nuptial agreement last fall.
Continue reading "Hulk Hogan accused of 'legal shenanigans' by wife" »
ST. PETERSBURG –- Snags in the election process, including a dead man who may be still on the voter rolls, prompted the city to delay a public hearing on a controversial annexation of several parcels in Tierra Verde.
City officials did not mention the dead man today when announcing the postponement, but referred to the possibility that voters are possibly living in a marina on land that could be annexed.
“Belatedly, they’ve discovered that there are people on live-aboards who are registered to vote,” said Dave Healey, executive director of the Pinellas Planning Council. The council acts as an advisory body to the commission on annexations and other issues.
“There was (also) a person who was registered to vote who is now deceased,” Healey added.
Healey said the PPC postponed consideration of the proposed annexation Wednesday because of questions concerning the provision of fire service should the lands be annexed. But, Healey said, the voter issue also was mentioned. If voters live there, St. Petersburg would have to choose a different method of annexation.
“I think it’s got to be sorted out,” Healey said.
Pinellas County Supervisor of Elections Deborah Clark did not return phone messages asking for comment. Instead, she had senior assistant county attorney Betsy Steg speak for her. Steg said that the developer discovered the live voters. But, Steg said, “I don’t know that anyone’s dead.”
Steg said she had no information about why a dead person may have been left on the voter rolls. The elections office usually gets a death certificate, which indicates someone is to be taken off the rolls, she said.
Steg was unable to answer questions about the effect of live voters on the annexation process.
“I'm not the right person to talk to about anything in land-use stuff,” she said.
- Anne Lindberg, Times staff writer
TAMPA -- Maybe she'd seen too many commercials.
A 13-year-old girl demanded to have it her way Saturday morning at a Hillsborough Avenue Burger King.
Little more than an hour after she was released from a juvenile assessment center, the girl barged into the fast food restaurant, brandishing a kitchen knife. There, in bare feet and pajamas, the teen came up to employee Ian Bowers and shouted, "Give me a burger!"
Instead of granting the wish, Bowers ran. The girl chased him through the Burger King kitchen, knife in the air. "Give me a (expletive) cheeseburger now!" she said, according to a witness.
Other employees stopped the girl and held her until police arrived. No one was injured. The girl, whose name is withheld because of her age, told officers she was hungry and wanted a burger.
The teen faces charges of armed burglary, armed robbery, and violation of home detention, police say.
For the record, she didn't get a Whopper. Police returned her to the juvenile assessment center. The lunch options there? Peanut butter and jelly or a bologna sandwich.
-- Abbie VanSickle, Times Staff Writer
TAMPA -- Hillsborough County deputies often arrest people for car theft, but on Thursday they encountered a man who took it to a whole new level -- stealing the car of the people arresting him. Click here to read more from today's St. Petersburg Times.
CLEARWATER –- Here's an important lesson, courtesy of the Clearwater police, who say they picked it up from Jimmy L. Walker, 48, of Clearwater:
Don't apply for a job at a business that you might later burglarize, and don't burglarize a business where you have applied for a job.
That's exactly what police say Walker did on Christmas Day, by smashing a side window to break into the Sunshine Car Wash in Clearwater and take $400 from the register.
On New Year’s Eve, he came back to take a tip box containing $9, police said.
Walker wore socks on his hands during the Christmas Day break-in, police say, but a surveillance camera captured his image during both incidents.
Unfortunately for him, a manager at the carwash recognized Walker because he had recently dropped off an application to work there, authorities said.
Walker was arrested on Jan. 3. He is being held in the Pinellas County Jail without bail on two counts of burglary, one count of petty theft and one count of violating his probation on a Pasco County charge of grand theft.
- Jonathan Abel, Times staff writer
Polk County Sheriff detectives are asking for help in identifying a man who solicited a juvenile to commit a lewd act between 2:30 and 3 p.m. today in the Eagle Lake area.
According to sheriff's spokeswoman Carrie Rodgers, the man is either Caucasian, Asian or Hispanic and driving a dark blue Jeep Liberty. He was also dressed as a woman, "wearing a black and white flowered sundress, silver high heels with gemstones on them, a dark brown wig with the hair pulled up in a clip and large sunglasses."
Anyone with information on the incident can contact the Polk County Sheriff's Office, toll-free at 1-800-226-0344, or Crime Stoppers, at 1-800-226-8477.
Ken Walker, Times staff writer
Jessica Sierra multimedia report
View our extended transformation photo gallery, watch video of Sierra's first appearance in which the judge suggests she find a "new form of entertainment," and watch surveillance video from the night of her arrest.
* * *
After wrestling on the ground after her ejection from an Ybor City club, former American Idol contestant Jessica Sierra punched an off-duty police officer in the face before spewing racial slurs and offering the arresting officers sexual favors for her release, according to a Tampa Police news release.
Sierra, 22, was tossed from the Full Moon Saloon on Saturday after police said she became belligerent. Outside the club, Sierra walked away but turned back, charging toward a group of clubgoers and yelling profanities, police said.
When officers tried to arrest her, she pushed away and tried to flee, police said. While in custody, police said, Sierra "went back and forth from being combative to apologetic."
Sierra was charged with disorderly intoxication and obstructing or opposing an officer without violence. Just two weeks ago, Sierra avoided jail time after pleading no contest to felony charges stemming from an incident in April in which she was accused of throwing a cocktail glass at a Hyde Park Cafe patron.
- Casey Cora, Times staff writer
Booking photo courtesy of Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office
The Pasco County Sheriff's Office is conducting an investigation into the death of a woman at 16034 Frost Drive in Hudson.
Sheriff's office spokesman Doug Tobin said the initial investigation did not show any signs of foul play -- deputies received a call from Pasco Fire Rescue shortly before noon Wednesday after someone visiting the home found the resident, a woman between 70 and 80 years old, dead.
The victim's name has not been released pending notification of her next of kin and positive identification.
Deputies investigating the death are contending with at least 20 dogs kept in the house, which had not been cleaned in quite some time.
"Dog feces filled the home," Tobin said in his statement. "One detective working the case said it was the worst condition he's ever seen in a home. The indication at this point is that this woman had moved into her garage and let the dogs live in the main house. It appeared the house had not been cleaned of dog feces for some time."
Animal Control and Hazmat officials were called to the scene to help with the investigation. County officials may have to decide whether the home will be condemned.
Watch a tampabay.com video report here.
Times staff writer
A suspected thief who plunged into a lake to flee authorities may have met his end at the jaws of an alligator, the Associated Press reports. The man's body was found the next day with gator teeth marks on his upper torso.
TAMPA -- They're still at it.
More than 24 hours have passed since 20 people desperate for tickets to the sold-out Hannah Montana concert Nov. 19 at the St. Pete Times Forum began hanging onto a 12-ft. statue of the singer in the parking lot of WLFZ-FM 93.3.
The MJ in the Morning radio stunt began at 7:57 a.m. Thursday, and by 6 p.m. three already had dropped out. By this morning, the number of people still hanging on had dropped to 13.
The last one hanging on wins $5,000, but more important: four tickets to see Hannah, a.k.a. Miley Cyrus, the current object of obsession for the 6- to 12-year-old set. Some said they are prepared to stay there for a week.
Most are parents trying to score tickets for their kids, and some have heart-rending stories behind their quest.
A live web stream keeps you abreast of the obsession.
- Time staff writer
[Times photo | Carrie Pratt]
ST. PETERSBURG - Here's another tale to file under the heading "urban myth.''
This one began with phone calls from one concerned resident to another. Then dozens of people got the same e-mail recounting a disturbing story.
Within days, the account of a jogger's near nightmare spread through the city’s chattering class like wildfire.
NEW PORT RICHEY -- Authorities have opened a criminal investigation into the possibility that the parents of a 14-year-old boy encouraged him to beat a 13-year-old boy in a public park as other teenagers watched. Someone made a video recording that was posted on YouTube.
The fight took place at about 5 p.m. last Friday at Mitchell Park on Little Road. The mother of the 13-year-old said she had to take the boy to Morton Plant North Bay Hospital afterward because he was bent over with pain.
Sheriff's spokesman Doug Tobin released a report on the incident Monday morning, but all the names had been blacked out because the investigation remains open. No arrests were immediately reported.
Tobin gave a reporter the Web address where the video had been posted, but it is no longer available. "This video has been removed by the user," the site said.
--Thomas Lake, Times Staff Writer
When the day came to bury an 83-year-old South Florida woman next to her husband, cemetery caretakers couldn't find his remains, the Miami Herald reports.The family may have been laying roses and saying prayers atop an empty plot for 17 years. The family is suing the cemetery, which says it is diligently trying to locate their loved one and put an end to the family's anguish.
A man in Hollywood used a dead dentist's identity to pass himself off as a dentist and join a dental practice, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports. The man treated patients and answered to the name of the dead man until state health inspectors showed up, then he confessed to knowing the doctor and stealing his identity, authorities said.
A Miami woman who once had her lover's name tattooed on her neck has been accused of helping her new lover murder the old one, the Miami Herald reports. The old boyfriend was recently released from jail and wanted to get back with the woman who is mother of several of his children. She had a new boyfriend -- but she still had the old boyfriend's name tattooed on her neck.
A mannequin hangs by a noose next to a disembodied torso outside Softails Tavern near Crystal River. The display has brought at least six complaints to the Citrus County Sheriff's Office. Click photo to enlarge. [Ron Thompson | Times]
When a Monroe County deputy stopped a convertible for speeding at 3:45 a.m., he found bottles of Bacardi Limon and Hennessy Cognac on the back seat and two plastic bags, each imprinted with a picture of a pot leaf and containing marijuana, the Key West Citizen reports. The occupants, a woman and two men, were arrested. They were on their way to Fantasy Fest in Key West.
When Collier County authorities were strip-searching a man who serves weekends in jail for a prior conviction, they found a bandage on his genitals, the Naples Daily News reports. A deputy asked the man what the bandage was for, and he replied, "I cut myself shaving." The man was told to remove the bandage. When he did, deputies found four yellow Xanax pills attached to the adhesive side of the bandage. Authorities booked the man on two felony charges.
A 7-year-old Lehigh Acres boy grabbed the keys and drove the family Caravan out of the driveway, across a street, into a culvert, back across the street, over a small queen palm, by an avocado tree and into a pine tree in the back yard, the Fort Myers News Press reports. The child did about $10,000 worth of damage to the family’s car, which had to be towed from the scene. The boy was treated for minor injuries at a hospital. No charges will be filed against him, authorities said.
The widow of a man accused of shoplifting who was fatally shot while fleeing a St. Johns County deputy has sued the sheriff and a deputy for negligence, excessive force and wrongful death, the St. Augustine Record reports. She is asking for $5-million. The suit claims the man was "cold-bloodedly shot ... in the back" by a deputy as he escaped from a St. Augustine Wal-Mart. Police reports say he threatened the store manager with a box-cutter-size knife and displayed the knife when the deputy tried to handcuff him.
A Port St. Lucie man known as "Cobraman" is in critical condition after his pet diamondback rattlesnake sank its fangs into his right hand Saturday, the Palm Beach Post reports. Raymond Hunter, who is known in South Florida as a guru on poisonous snakes, drove himself to a hospital but passed out at the wheel of his car in the parking lot.
ZEPHYRHILLS -- James Roope, 20 years old and unemployed, is accused of smacking his mother's arm, poking her neck and shoving her against the dryer. It all started with ranch dressing.
Just after noon Sunday, according to an arrest report, Roope was in the kitchen, making lunch, when his mother asked him to use the ranch dressing that was already open.
This perturbed the young man and led to the violence, the report said.
Roope, of 2117 Hilda Ann Road, Zephyrhills, was arrested and charged with simple domestic battery. He was held without bail Monday in the Land O'Lakes jail.
The report did not make clear whether Roope had, in fact, opened a second bottle of ranch.
-Thomas Lake, Times staff writer
A Florida wildlife officer was killed after her all-terrain vehicle crashed in a remote part of the Everglades and pinned her underneath for hours, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports. The 47-year-old officer was on patrol for poachers who often target alligators and deer at night. She struck a metal gate and was ejected from her ATV, which overturned and fell on top of her, according to the Florida Highway Patrol.
CITRUS SPRINGS -- Authorities on Friday arrested a Citrus County man who they said tried to persuade a St. Petersburg man to help him kill someone so they could use the body for sex, officials said.
Kevin Wade Daley, 50, of Citrus Springs was arrested on a charge of criminal solicitation to commit first-degree murder. He was being held without bail at Citrus County Detention Facility in Lecanto.
According to the Citrus County Sheriff's Office, Daley struck up a friendship over the Internet with a 44-year-old St. Petersburg man and, while chatting online, talked about his desire to kill someone and use the body for sex. The man, whose name was not released, instead alerted authorities on Oct. 11.
Daley later revealed his intended target, a 27-year-old Homosassa man who had done some work in his neighborhood, sheriff’s officials said. On Thursday, detectives decided to arrest Daley.
"This is not somebody you'd want as your next-door neighbor," said Gail Tierney, a sheriff's spokeswoman.
Jacob H. Fries, Times staff writer
A Daytona Beach bank robbery suspect has made a deal with federal prosecutors to testify against a Russian man she says paid her to marry him so he could stay in the United States, the Daytona Beach News-Journal reports.
Lucille Tate, who last year pulled off a daring daylight robbery at a bank branch next to an FBI office, called a taxi to pick her up after the robbery. She left town with $2,399 in loot.
Now Tate has agreed to testify against Sergey Sobinov, who she says paid her about $10,000 to marry him. In exchange for her testimony, Tate was sentenced to drug treatment and probation.
Fort Pierce police were in the process of arresting two car theft suspects when they discovered a dried alligator's foot in the stolen car the suspects were in, the Palm Beach Post reports. A wildlife officer said the foot belonged to an alligator that was illegally trapped.
Barbie the Shetland sheepdog was probably going to be euthanized. Barbie belonged to a North Miami man suspected of killing his pal, stuffing him in a suitcase and dumping him out near the Everglades. The owner was going to jail pending trial, so a police sergeant took Barbie home and cared for her until the suspect's family surfaced. Then she took Barbie to the family. The sergeant was suspended, the Miami Herald reports.
A 31-year-old man faces an aggravated battery after deputies say he bit his roommate's ear off during a fight, the Palm Beach Post reports.
Corrections officers at Lowell Correctional allowed two female inmates to be joined in a wedding ceremony, prison officials said today, according to the Orlando Sentinel.
The room was decorated with state paper towels and makeshift pink bows made from inmate request forms. Figures of two women sat atop a wedding cake surrounded by cards and endearments. Wearing a veil clipped to her hair and holding a bouquet of flowers, one of the women was escorted down a set of stairs to the ceremony while another inmate sang.
Eight officers were disciplined in the incident. Six were suspended, one resigned and another was fired, the newspaper reported.
DNA testing cannot be done in the contract killing of citrus and cattle baron Charles Von Maxcy because evidence from the sensational 1966 case apparently no longer exists, the Florida Supreme Court ruled today.
The justices unanimously affirmed a trial judge's decision denying DNA testing sought by death row inmate William H. Kelley. He was convicted of killing Von Maxcy in 1984 - 18 years after the 41-year-old victim was stabbed and shot to death at his Sebring home, the Associated Press reports
A 39-year-old woman is on trial for forcefully having her promiscuous 13-year-old daughter's genitalia pierced to make it uncomfortable for her to have sex, the Associated Press reports. The girl, now 16, told jurors Wednesday how her mother in 2004 asked a tattoo artist friend to shave her head to make her unattractive to boys and later held her down for the piercing.
HOLIDAY -- About 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, an unemployed 47-year-old man was on his front porch with his dog at the Holiday Travel Park when a white Chevrolet pickup truck pulled up.
He told authorities that this happened next:
A masked man walked toward him. As the victim turned to go inside, he felt a metal object against the back of his head. He heard the cocking sound of what he believed to be a .44 Magnum.
"Give me your money or give me your life," the robber said.
So the victim handed over his money, and the robber fled -- with 62 cents.
The story's veracity is uncertain, sheriff's spokesman Doug Tobin said. There is no evidence to support it, nor is there evidence to disprove it.
"It should be noted," the deputy's report read, "(the complainant) was intoxicated and told me he had been drinking beer for several hours."
--Thomas Lake, Times staff writer
A Marion County man police say was trying to rob a CVS last night got stuck in a ventilation shaft for 10 hours and had to yell for help, the Orlando Sentinel reports. The man climbed on the roof of a Silver Springs Shores drug store, tied a rope and lowered himself into the air-conditioning shaft. The rope broke, and he fell about 10 feet. His hands were pinned and his feet went through the bottom of the shaft. Said a Marion County sheriff's captain, "He was begging the manager to help him out."
Federal prosecutors in Miami say an orphan smuggled into Miami from Haiti at age 14 lived in a southwest Miami home for almost six years, fearful of being deported, under conditions that amounted to involuntary servitude, the Miami Herald reports. The girl had to work 15-hour days, seven days a week with no schooling and no freedom. A rolled-up mattress on the dining room floor served as her bed. Her shower was a hose in the back yard. When visitors came over, she was told to hide in a closet or the garage.
A South Florida radio personality found his aunt's grave open and her skull and rib cage missing, the Miami Herald reports. He found her casket flooded with water and scattered feathers. It's not the first time such a thing has happened.
Over the years, families paying their respects in some South Florida cemeteries have periodically found headless remains yanked from cracked-open burial chambers and strewn on the overgrown grass with evidence of ritualistic religious practices scattered around.
Times staff writer
Three managers of the Orlando Weekly newspaper were arrested this afternoon by law enforcement officers on charges of aiding and abetting in prostitution, the Orlando Sentinel reports. The Metropolitan Bureau of Investigation arrested the three employees from the newspaper's advertising department at a job fair sponsored by the weekly.
Times staff writer
HUDSON -- Someone has killed a cat with a hammer in Leisure Beach, according to an allegation authorities are investigating.
The cat died Sunday and the report was made Monday, sheriff's spokesman Kevin Doll said. A detailed report on the incident was not available today and no arrests have been made.
Thomas Lake, Times staff writer
NEW PORT RICHEY -- Five Bud Lights later, he left the club. It was after 3 a.m., time to go home, and of course his car was outside, his silver six-speed Pontiac GTO, because these are the suburbs, and people drive to bars in the suburbs, and then they come out, breathing heavy, forehead numb, faced with a crucial decision.
Do I call 411, find a cab company, wait a long time, pay a lot of money, and then worry the next morning about retrieving my car?
Or do I crank the engine and pray?
Before you find out what Jeffery James Hurley did Sunday morning outside the Nocturnal B.Y.O.B. club at U.S. 19 and Trouble Creek Road, you should know he had at least two people telling him not to drive.
And that those two people were sheriff's deputies.
Continue reading "Despite deputies' warnings, man drives away drunk" »
William Joseph Galloway wrecked his pickup after leading St. Johns sheriff's deputies on a 115-mph chase and tossing beer cans out the window. So authorities weren't thrilled with the 26-year-old man's next move: swigging beer and giving them the middle finger. Authorities said he told them "he was going to die fighting and swinging." But a Taser shock ended that threat, the Associated Press reports.
A Sanford man was looking for a bad wire in his attic after the power went out when he found $100,000 in cash, starting a messy legal fight over who should get the money, the Associated Press reports. The money was hidden in a cavity cut in the insulation in four plastic bags filled with $20 and $100 bills and stuffed into a strongbox. The man, a 26-year-old computer engineer, remembered that someone was killed in the home years earlier, so he called police.
A man in Punta Gorda kept the decomposing body of his 86-year-old roommate in their house for a month while he used the dead man's ATM card and cashed his checks, police said.The body was discovered in a bedroom of the small house Thursday after a rent collector stopped by, smelled a foul odor and contacted authorities, the Associated Press reported.
The woman had contusions and bruising on her forehead, right ear and shoulder blade, as well as a sprained pinkie finger, a sheriff's report said.
Michael V. Russo, 37, of 2030 Cemetery Road, Holiday, was arrested, charged with domestic battery and held without bail in the Land O'Lakes jail.
A report said he told a deputy that his wife had fallen on the front porch, and that he told one of their children to give the same story.
--Thomas Lake, Times Staff Writer
A Miami charter boat, minus its missing four crew members, was towed to a Miami Coast Guard station today, the Miami Herald reports. Two passengers found floating in the Florida Straits near Cuba are being investigated by the FBI, thanks to someone surfing the Internet who tipped off investigators that one of the men might be fugitive from Arkansas wanted for stealing $92,620 in cash from a Wal-Mart.
Have you been attacked by something in Florida's wild? If you’ve been bitten by something like a brown recluse spider, a coral snake, an alligator or even a shark, and are willing to tell the tale, please e-mail us at local@sptimes.com and put "dangerous bites" in the subject line.
A former Girl Scout leader in Santa Rosa County used the Social Security numbers and birth dates of members of her troop to file fraudulent claims with the IRS, authorities say. The woman received more than $87,000 from the IRS after filing claims totaling more than $187,000, the Northwest Florida Daily News reports.
Officials said the woman used a permission slip and medical release form for an upcoming field trip to obtain the information. The girls in the troop were between the ages of 9 and 11. The woman also used her own four children's identity in the scheme, authorities said.
The woman pleaded not guilty in federal court, the Pensacola News-Journal reported. She was allowed to leave the courtroom on condition that she give up her volunteer position with a youth soccer league, cancel her Internet access and remove two computers and firearms from her home.
The woman entered phony income statements into computer tax software on her home computer to create phony income tax returns and used the Social Security numbers she obtained to prepare and electronically file federal income tax returns with the IRS, court documents said.
For decades, Bill Henry, of Lakeland, told people he was the former major league pitcher from Texas. People believed he played in the majors for 16 years, pitched two games of the 1961 World Series while pitching for the Cincinnati Reds. Then Bill Henry, of Lakeland, died. And it came to light that he wasn't the baseball legend at all. In fact, reports The Ledger, Bill Henry, the pitcher, is still living. In Texas. "Let everybody know that I'm still kicking," the retired ballplayer said. And of the man who stole his identity, Bill Henry, the pitcher, said, "I'm baffled."
This all happened Monday night at the Best Western at 6826 U.S. 19, according to a New Port Richey police report.
The man writes his cell phone number and the name "Ron" on a piece of paper. He tells the clerk to call him if the woman comes back. Then he leaves.
The clerk's boyfriend stops by. The clerk tells him the story. He calls New Port Richey police to verify the man's story. They send out an officer, who arrives around the same time the man shows back up to check on the woman.
The officer arrests the man on a charge of impersonating an officer. (He also gets charged with DUI.) His name is Ronald J. Auriemma, and he is 38, and he lives at 7333 Bent Oak Drive in Port Richey. He is held Tuesday in lieu of $5,250 bail.
The man denies impersonating an officer. But he tells a story that, if true, explains a whole lot.
He says he picked up a woman he believed to be a prostitute, gave her $60, and drove her to the Best Western to "get laid." He says the woman went inside but never came back.
Thomas Lake, Times staff writer
Liriano filed a theft report, and a lieutenant from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission went looking for the purloined wildlife, and on Friday some of it turned up in Hudson, nearly 300 miles away.
According to a sheriff's incident report, Lt. Steve Delacure and a deputy found numerous birds and a tortoise in a house at 7513 Cypress Knee Drive. That was the address connected with a license plate on a white Dodge Ram 1500 that had been spotted at the scene of the theft.
The officers arrested Robert Walter Howard, 31, of the above address, on several charges, including grand theft and dealing in stolen property.
Liriano, the store owner, said he rented a U-Haul to bring the creatures back. (Including Tiny the tortoise.) About two-thirds of the birds are still missing, and Liriano said insurance would not cover them.
"Put it this way," he said. "He left me blank. In ruins. He left me completely destroyed."
--Thomas Lake, Times Staff Writer
An elderly couple in rural Wahneta were sitting on the back porch about 11:25 a.m. having a glass of iced tea they discovered a man in their house stealing cash, jewelry and firearms. The robber escaped on a bike, The Ledger in Lakeland reports. Authorities are looking for an unshaven Hispanic man on a dark-colored bicycle.
It was a gathering so strange, it belonged on the pages of the
Weekly World News.
Instead, it was the final send-off for the salacious
tabloid devoted to Elvis sightings, alien abductions and the continuing
exploits of "bat boy," the half-bat, half-child orphan. Editors,
reporters and fans gathered at a Lake Worth bar Sunday to pay tribute
to the cheeky tabloid, whose last publication was Aug. 27, according to
the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.
One person came as gonzo journalist
Hunter S. Thompson. Another topped his alien costume with a sombrero. A
third, naturally, dressed as Elvis
LAND O’ LAKES -- First he was accused of venturing from his neo-Nazi compound to stab a woman and kill a 17-year-old boy.
Then Pasco County authorities said he tried to break out of his jail cell using smuggled saw blades and torn sheets.
Now you can add another charge to John Allen Ditullio’s list: possession of contraband in a detention facility.
According to an arrest report, a deputy searching Ditullio’s cell Sunday morning found tobacco and a toothbrush that had been shaved to a sharp point.
Ditullio, 21, said he knew nothing about the contraband.
Apparently jail officials didn’t believe him.
--Thomas Lake, Times Staff Writer
TAMPA -- Firefighters with Hillsborough County Fire Rescue, Eastlake Station No. 32, were dispatched to the scene of a medical emergency shortly after 6 p.m. Friday and returned about an hour later to find a grease fire raging on the stove.
Fire rescue officials said the crew quickly extinguished the fire with a handheld fire extinguisher, but not before the fire caused extensive damage to the kitchen. No one was injured.
The crew has been reassigned to another fire station until more permanent arrangements can be made.
Fire rescue public information officer Raymond Yeakley said Tampa Fire Rescue and Temple Terrace Fire Rescue will help respond to calls in the area served by the station, located at the corner of Harney Road and 56th Street, to avoid reduced service to the community.
PLANT CITY — A 7-year-old boy drove off in his mother's car Wednesday after arguing with her, a Hillsborough sheriff's spokeswoman said.
The boy didn’t go far from his house on the 1500 block of Holloman Drive before he stopped the Ford Echo and ran away.
Deputies searched for the child for the next hour and a half, spokeswoman Debbie Carter said. Around 8 p.m., a neighbor found him hiding inside a nearby church. He was returned home without incident.
Rebecca Catalanello, Times staff writer
Someone raided the fridge at Prange Brake and Wheel Alignment in Orlando and got away with a frozen alligator head.
"We hope he jumps when he opens the garbage bag," Steve Prange, 55, told the Orlando Sentinel, laughing about the latest burglar in the family-owned shop’s 87-year history. "About 10 years ago, they stole a whole damn deer."
A friend of Prange's was storing the head in the freezer until he could mount it.
Someone scaled the shop's 6-feet-tall, chain-link fence on Monday evening and carried away 20 to 30 pounds of frozen kingfish, dolphin and snapper; two to three pounds of frozen venison and the alligator head, the Sentinel reported.
Orlando police officer Jim Young said anyone seen with a frozen alligator head will draw attention.
"They know one's missing," Young said. "Taxidermied animals have disappeared before, but this is the first frozen alligator's head I've heard of."
NEW PORT RICHEY -- They were drinking in an abandoned house, a woman and two men, and things got sexual, and wouldn't you know it: complications.
This all comes from a sheriff's incident report. Around 8 p.m. Monday, Gerald Cerveny (left) was having sex with Kristine Tyson, 37, who just happened to be Michael Sengstock's ex-girlfriend, and Sengstock was watching.
How could anything go wrong?
There are various accounts. One says Sengstock tried to give Cerveny some pointers, and Cerveny didn't appreciate it. Another says Sengstock picked up a board and made it clear he was about the give Cerveny a whipping.
In any case, the report says, Cerveny grabbed a bottle and smashed it across the back of Sengstock's head, causing a laceration that would later require several staples to close.
Sengstock ran away and got a neighbor to call 911. Cerveny, 40, was arrested and charged with aggravated battery. He was held Wednesday in the Land O' Lakes jail in lieu of $4,000 bail.
There is a third possible motive for the attack, the report said: Cerveny was suffering from performance anxiety under the gaze of another man.
--Thomas Lake, Times Staff Writer
Photo courtesy of Pasco County Sheriff's Office.
"How could you steal from a cocker spaniel?" wondered Doug Tobin, a spokesman for the Pasco County Sheriff's Office.
Barbara Jean Lippincott, 54, was arrested Tuesday night and charged with grand theft. She is free on $5,000 bail.
The charges were field in Pasco County because Lippincott lived at 27515 Ascot Street in Wesley Chapel when they occurred. Her current address is listed as 12150 Fort King Highway, Thonotosassa.
The arrest report also says Lippincott is a professor for the University of Tampa.
Her area of expertise: accounting.
--Thomas Lake, Times Staff Writer
A former police officer was sentenced to 90 days in jail for defrauding his department by claiming he had been called to active duty in Iraq. He actually had taken a civilian job in Tampa and was getting two paychecks, the Associated Press reports.
Delray Beach Police officer Vincent Balestrieri, 37, was sentenced Friday by Broward County Circuit Judge William Berger for defrauding the department out of $8,700.
In addition to lying about being called to Navy duty, Balestrieri also received bereavement pay because he had claimed that his mother had died. He acknowledged Friday that his mother was still alive.
Balestrieri blamed his actions on pressure from a Delray Beach police captain to buy a home he couldn't afford from the captain's wife. He also said his wife had medical bills he could not pay.
Instead of going to Iraq, Balestrieri was actually working for defense contractor Lockheed Martin in Tampa. While there, Balestrieri and his wife bought a $220,000 home. Lockheed Martin fired Balestrieri last September.
Balestrieri joined the Navy Reserve in 1998, and previously served for 13 years with the New York Police Department. Balestrieri always dreamed of coming to Florida to be a police officer, he said. There were several retired New York officers working for Delray Beach and he was eager to get his own patrol car and equipment. "I was like a kid in a candy store," he told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.
A Clermont man is accused of setting his estranged wife (and himself) on fire, encouraging his pregnant 17-year-old daughter to fake labor so his wife would skip a court appearance to be with her, and paying a cellmate to take his wife on a gambling junket the week of a scheduled trial, the Orlando Sentinel reports. The man has fired his attorney and intends to represent himself when his trial begins next week. He faces up to 44 years in prison if convicted on all the charges against him.
Winter, a tailless dolphin, lived at the Clearwater Marine Aquarium since 2005, when she was rescued by a fisherman who found her tangled in a buoy line of a crab trap. [AP photo]
In a move reminiscent of MacGyver, the TV cult hero of the 1980s who got himself out of tight spots with everyday items, an Orlando man is fashioning an artificial tail for a tailless dolphin at the Clearwater Marine Aquarium. Unlike MacGyver, though, the prosthetic specialist is creating first-of-its-kind stuff for the hapless sea mammal, the Associated Press reports.
The young dolphin, named Winter, was a frail, dehydrated 3-month-old when she came to the hospital in December 2005. A fisherman found her tangled in the buoy line of a crab trap in Indian River Lagoon near Cape Canaveral. The line cut off the blood supply to her tail and it slowly fell off like shreds of paper as the aquarium team worked to save her life.
Winter learned how to swim without her tail, which is used for propulsion -- amazing her handlers with a unique combination of moves that resemble an alligator's undulating swimming style and a shark's side-to-side tail swipes. Winter uses her flippers, normally employed for steering and braking, to get moving.
Police say a Pompano Beach man was shot and killed in his wife's car in front of his girlfriend's Fort Lauderdale home about 4 a.m. Friday, the Miami Herald reports. The girlfriend found him about 6 a.m. sprawled in the grass. The car door was open while police investigated the area, suggesting the man may have been getting out of the car when he was shot, a detective said. Hours after the shooting both the wife and the girlfriend were at the crime scene.
Scientists have found a prehistoric creature in an area that was once bone dry - the Florida Everglades. Archaeologist Willard Steele of the Tribal Historic Preservation Office at the Seminole Tribe's Big Cypress Reservation, found the remains of a mammoth last month, the Miami Herald reports. Steele pegs the age of the remains at more than 10,000 years old. He thinks the area where the bones were found included one of the few watering holes around at the time.
Police say a Cape Coral man stuffed two steaks in his pants and took off from a Publix in his parents' Cadillac SUV, the Fort Myers News-Press reports. He was caught on a store surveillance camera, but police did not chase him. A short time later the man was involved in a traffic accident in which he crashed into a red Ford pickup truck which then hit a silver Honda Accord. No one was hurt in those cars but the man apparently had a seizure. He was taken to a hospital and released, but was arrested on theft charges.
A North Port policeman gave a city worker a $123.50 ticket for driving a golf cart on the sidewalk while looking for trash ahead of a city maintenance mower, the Charlotte News reports. City workers ride ahead of a mower looking for litter so it doesn't get scattered by the mower. The police chief says its illegal to drive golf carts on the sidewalk. "City employees should be treated like everyone else," he said. The public works director says the workers are just doing their jobs. "The point is, they are not on a joy ride. They are working," he said. Now taxpayers are paying for an attorney for the city to look into the matter to see if maybe it was okay for the employee to be on the sidewalk when he was ticketed.
In a world that sees pit bulls as the scourge of the Earth, Sadie, the good pit bull, may be something of a curiosity. A cushy lifestyle offered by her new adoptive parents sure beats the kennel at the Humane Society of Manatee County, the Bradenton Herald reports. The two-year-old pit bull mix languished away at the Humane Society for more than a year, passed over by prospective pet owners who feared the breed's reputation for vicious aggression. Those fears were heightened after the arrest of Michael Vick, the Atlanta Falcons quarterback, who accepted a plea deal Monday in connection with a dogfighting scandal. But recently adopted Sadie takes three-mile walks, plays games and offers plenty of affection. "If you would have told me I was going to pick a pit bull, I would have said, 'No way,' " said Amy Maxfield, Sadie's new owner. "I believed all of the media hype about pit bulls. There was no way I was going to adopt a pit bull."
A Palm Beach millionaire convicted of killing his wife during a nasty divorce has died in prison, less than two weeks before a trial was to begin that could have wiped out his fortune, the Palm Beach Post reports. He was 73. Fred Keller was a poor, German immigrant in 1957 who got into commercial real estate and wound up in a waterfront mansion and a $72-million fortune. Read more about his rise and fall in this 2005 St. Petersburg Times story.
Photo courtesy of the Palm Beach Post.
On the 15th anniversary of Hurricane Andrew hitting Miami, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel asks what would happen if it hit Broward County. "It'd be just like having a war,'' says Charles Lanza, Miami-Dade's emergency management director. Property damage coudl total $48.2 billion with a direct hit on Miami; $40.2 billion with a Fort Lauderdale hit; and $29.8 billion with a Boynton Beach hit, experts tell the newspaper.
Former astronaut Lisa Nowak is in court to try to persuade a judge to free her from a monitoring ankle bracelet. Her romantic rival and alleged victim in the astronaut love triangle, Colleen Shipman, is also in the courtroom. This will be the first time Nowak has given her side of the story, and it has created a crush of news media. The Orlando Sentinel is all over it here. The object of their affection, astronaut Bill Oefelein, is MIA.
A Miami Beach cop fondled a woman suspected of drunken driving and weeks later tried to kiss her at a South Beach bar where he downed two vodkas while in uniform. But Officer Eduardo Macias, 32, didn't realize the woman wore a wire when she met him at Mango's Tropical Cafe in South Beach. And now, the Miami Herald reports, a year-long investigation is ending with Marcias' arrest on charges of official misconduct, perjury and battery - the fourth officer in Miami-Dade County to be arrested on sex-related charges in the past five months.
A Panama City man known as Candyman was acquitted of burglary and rape charges Wednesday, the third time in three years he has been acquitted of charges that could have put him behind bars for decades, the North Florida News-Herald reports.
The man, Canom “Candyman” Williams, was accused of forcing his way into a Panama City home and forcing a woman to perform oral sex on him while he held a gun to her head. His attorney told jurors that Williams and the woman had a short sexual affair while both were involved with other people. She said Williams had consensual sex with the woman earlier on the day of the attack. The woman denied the affair. The jury deliberated an hour before acquitting Williams.
Williams was tried in 2004 on a charge of aggravated battery with a firearm. He was accused of shooting a man in the chest. On the day of trial, the man refused to testify. Williams also was tried in 2006 in the shooting of a man as he sat in a car at a gas station. The man said he knew Williams since elementary school and looked him in the face after the shot was fired, but jurors acquitted Williams.
He still faces charges of trafficking drugs and possessing a firearm. He could go to trial on those charges in October.
Two large snakes -- a python and a boa constrictor -- were found on the loose in Lee County within 15 hours, the Fort Myers News-Press reports. A 9-foot green Burmese python was discovered by a painter at an apartment complex in Fort Myersre Wednesday morning. A 6-foot red tailed boa constrictor was discovered on the loose, pursuing a cat in San Carlos Park late Wednesday night. Licensed trappers captured the slithery critters.
Early Thursday morning in the Oakstead subdivision north of State Road 54, two brothers were having a quarrel. A sheriff's incident report said it had to do with $20, or possibly only $10, as well as an alleged assault with a motor vehicle and some missing Xanax. The report says Kyle Francis Odom, 21, of 2738 Tanglewylde Drive, Land O' Lakes, got angry at his 19-year-old brother, Dustin, and anointed him with a glass of 2-percent milk.
Someone called the authorities, who determined Kyle (photo above) to be the primary aggressor, and they took him to jail on a charge of domestic battery.
Kyle, a manager at Shane's Rib Shack in Land O' Lakes, was held without bail Thursday morning.
According to the incident report, the battery could have been worse: Kyle told a deputy he threw the milk instead of feeding his brother a knuckle sandwich.
--Thomas Lake, Times staff writer
Photo courtesy of Pasco County Sheriff's Office.
A 39-year-old Naples woman is charged with child abuse after having her 13-year-old daughter's genitals pierced to make sex uncomfortable and cutting her hair to make her look unattractive. The defense says it's a parental rights case: mother trying to control daughter. The prosecutor says the mother is angry her daughter had sex with the mother's 30-year-old boyfriend. The woman is free on $50,000 bond and the trial begins Oct. 23, the Naples Daily News reports.
When Kristen Smith, 69, of Bradenton was robbed behind a gas station in 2006, she told police a white man did it. The police put Victor Perez, 21, a Latino, in a photo lineup along with other suspects. Perez had been questioned before in the same neighborhood in an unrelated incident. Smith didn't pick out Perez in the first lineup. Investigators put Perez in another photo lineup -- twice. One photo was his driver's licence. He was the only man shown in two photos. At last, Smith picked out Perez as the man who robbed her. And she reportedly asked the detective if she got the right man, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reports. And the detective reportedly nodded his head, court records say. Perez was convicted and sent to prison.
Now, on an appeal challenging the credibility of the victim's ID, he has accepted a plea deal that leaves him labeled a felon but gets him out of prison. Kristen Smith is frustrated and disappointed. She thinks Perez should have spent more time behind bars. She says next time she may be reluctant to call police.
Miami Police Chief John Timoney finally bought the luxury SUV he's been driving for free, but that has done nothing to quell a simmering rebellion among his troops. Miami's police union plans a rare vote next month on whether to declare a lack of confidence in his leadership, the Miami Herald reports. The Lexus is only the tip of Timmons' problems, the union says.
ST. PETERSBURG -- A naked man dancing on Central Avenue escaped arrest this morning after responding officers couldn't track him down.
Police received a call about the man, who was reportedly dancing on Central Avenue near 31st Street, just after 6 a.m.
When they arrived, however, the man was already gone. Or already dressed.
-- Casey Cora, Times staff writer
A 4-year-old Aventura girl was rescued after her older brother started the family car and it jumped over a curb and into a canal behind their apartment, the Associated Press reports. girl's mother, Tatiana Columbus, had been strapping her into a car seat Tuesday. Columbus and her 12-year-old son were able to free themselves from the Volvo but the girl was stuck inside. The car was submerged by the time bystanders broke the car's back window using a weed wacker and rescued the girl. The girl breathed from a pocket of air in the car. See the video.
Crocodiles and kids apparently have at least one thing in common: Act up and they go to time out. That's what happened to a saltwater croc at Gatorland Zoo in Orlando after she got too territorial and started "acting out,'' the Orlando Sentinel reports. "She's being a bit of a bully,'' said Mike Hileman, entertainment director at the roadside attraction. Gatorland employees moved the croc out of her pond and to a different holding area where she'll stay until she can work out her "issues.''
Federal agents arrested three Lakeland men in an alleged multi-million dollar software piracy scheme, The Ledger reports. Officials said the men, all in their 50s, copied software from major companies using automated CD burners and labeling machines and sold it on the Internet through bogus websites that included BuysUSA.com, CDSalesUSA.com, AmericanSoftWareSales.com, TheDealDepot.net, and BestValueShoppe.com. A fourth man is already serving six years in federal prison. He was ordered to pay more than $4.1 million in restitution to software makers Adobe Systems, Autodesk, and Macromedia.
A Putnam County judge near Jacksonville has an unusual way of dealing with shoplifters: public shame and humiliation. County Judge Peter Miller sentences shoplifters to return to the scene of the crime bearing a placard: "I stole from this store." Says the judge: "Even a thief gets embarrassed.'' A defense attorney tells the Florida Times-Union it's the one thing his clients hate the most.
A Naples couple who didn't win the NBC promotion Today Throws a Martha Stewart Wedding, performed on the morning network show dressed in cheerleader costumes from Saturday Night Live's Spartan cheerleaders skit. They performed a 30-second cheer they wrote about their relationship and why they should win the competition, the Naples Daily News reports. No word on how they compared with Will Ferrell and Teri Ocheri who originated the late 1990s SNL skit.
A court battle is underway over a Palm Beach socialite's estate - and she's not even dead. Gloria Wolosoff turns 86 Friday but sufferens from dementia and is unware that her attorney is fighting her former jewler over the bulk of her multi-million-dollar estate. The Palm Beach Post Page Two column lays out the sordid details. A bizarre Florida twoer: The top item in the column is about the enduring mystery surrounding the late Leona Helmsley's claim that she was stabbed by an intruder at her Palm Beach Towers apartment. It remains unsolved.
There are only two tattoo parlors on world-famous Duval Street and that's all there will be, according to a lawsuit settlement with Key West. City officials agreed to let the existing establishments remain after the owners sued. Any new tattoo parlors would have to be located in a commercial zone away from the strip, the Key West Citizen reports.
Fifty-one-year-old Charlie Lee Thomas of Punta Gorda was supposed to go to prison for five years. Instead, he let the battery on his GPS ankle monitor run down and skipped town. Now there's only one other person with a GPS monitor in Charlotte County. There have only been four ever, the Charlotte News reports. Authorities have been looking for Thomas since July 19. An official with the company that administers the ankle monitors for the county says this is the first time in his five years with the company that anyone has run away.
A 50-year-old Fort Lauderdale man is accused of drowning his father in the ocean after the elderly man, who suffered from Alzheimer's disease, wandered naked on the beach, the Associated Press reports. Police said a grand jury could decide later this month whether there is enough evidence to indict Robert "Bobby" Yurkanin II for murder. He was arrested on suspicion of murdering his father, but is free on $100,000 bond.
Robert Yurkanin Sr., 84, wandered from his upscale oceanfront condominium to the beach on June 15, then removed his swim trunks and stood naked on the sand, police said. He often wandered away from home as his Alzheimer's disease grew worse, neighbors said. Bobby Yurkanin found his father, then as shocked beachcombers looked on, he dragged him into the ocean, according to an arrest warrant.
Continue reading "Man accused of drowning naked dad in ocean" »
Paige Belser, the manager at a Goodwill store in Nokomis, was talking to a woman about the donation of an entertainment center whena dog lunged out of the woman's pickup truck and bit the tip of Belser's thumb off, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reports. Belser ran into the Goodwill center to grab towels to compress her bleeding thumb. When she went back outside, the truck, the owner, the dog and the tip of her thumb were gone. Authorities are looking for the owner.
A Hillsborough County judge called the cops on a crew from Fox News Channel's The O'Reilly Factor after finding them parked in his driveway at home. The crew wanted to interview him about his decision to grant bail to a man accused of killing Hillsborough sheriff's St. Ron Harrison. Read more here.
About 8,000 American Idol hopefuls turned out to audition in Miami this morning, but producers expect no more than 500 will make it through to the next found of judging before producers (and even fewer to the next round, in front of Simon, Paula and Randy). Idol producer Patrick Lynn insisted - apparently with a straight face - that the judges are not looking for talentless car wrecks to liven up the first few shows. "We know what makes good TV,'' Lynn tells the Miami Herald. "We're not looking for people who just want to get on TV.''
Mixed in with movies of birthday parties and family vacations was footage of an adoptive mother encouraging her naked daughter to perform a sex act. The girl's aunt, who took custody of the girl after the adoptive parents were accused of abuse, told two Palm Beach County foster care workers about the tape. They did nothing about it, the Palm Beach Post reports.
A woman who was leaving church in Jacksonville Monday night was chased through downtown streets by her estranged husband, who fired several gunshots at her before crashing his car, the Florida Times-Union reports. "You could see the fire coming from the gun,'' an eyewitness says.
Photo courtesy of Seminole County Sheriff's office.
An Orlando-area man is betting on the death of Lou Pearlman. Julian Benscher of Windermere, a former investor in an airship business Pearlman owned in the 1990s, has agreed to buy three lapsing life-insurance policies and split the proceeds with bankruptcy creditors if the former boy-band music mogul dies, the St. Petersburg Times' personal finance editor, Helen Huntley, reports. "He is not the fittest-looking person I've ever seen,'' Benscher said.
Two tree trimmers from New York are accused of killing a woman whose head was found in a grocery bag pulled from an Everglades canal. The two men bragged to a roommate that they killed a woman they said was a "crack head' and dismembered her body with "pole saws and other tree trimming equipment'' and dumped her body in the Everglades, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports. They washed blood from the tools at at Port Orange motel, the Daytona Beach News-Journal reports.
A 15-year-old girl has died after a parasailing accident in Pompano Beach, and the boat operator could face charges, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports. Amber White's 17-year-old sister, Crystal, survived the accident that plunged them into the side of a hotel on Saturday. The National Weather Service had warned of high winds. An accident report by the Broward Sheriff's Office blamed "careless/reckless'' operation by the boat captain. No charge has yet been filed.
Miami's police chief drives a luxury SUV provided free by a car dealer, an arrangement that may violate state law, a Miami TV station reports. Miami Police Chief John Timoney first denied the free deal. "The chief says he leases the Lexus,'' Miami police spokesman Lt. William Schwartz told WFOR-TV Ch. 4. "He pays for the car. There isn't a story here.'' When the station pointed out that the car sports a dealer's tag, Timmons' story changed. It seems Timmons leases another Lexus and is test-driving the hybrid SUV. "He's thinking about buying one,'' Schwartz said. Some test drive: He's had it for about a year.
A Boynton Beach woman screamed in pain from inside a Toyota that just hit a police car. She seemed ready to sue over a back injury from the wreck - until another woman in the car told police she wasn't even in the car at the time of the crash. Shava Shirlee-Sophia Powell hopped into the car in a scheme to defraud the Boca Raton Police Department, police said. She was in another car at the time of the collision around 4 a.m. on Sunday, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports.
Hurricane Dean was never a threat to Florida, but don't tell 8-year-old Heather Snoke. When she heard about the storm last week she hopped on her bike and headed for Ohio. She didn't get far, though. A massive search began and she was found a mile from home. The family moved recently from Columbus, and she figured it was safter there than her new home in DeLand, the Orlando Sentinel reports.
A zoo near Pensacola has seen three animals killed in the past six weeks, the latest being a 100-pound South American rodent called a capybara that was gored by a hippo. "Evidently, our female hippo was being a real African Nile hippo and got irritibale with the capybara,'' Douglas Kemper, director of Zoo Northwest Florida in Gulf Breeze, tells the Pensacola News-Journal. The zoo's death rate, he says, is normal: "There's life and death at a zoo.''
A 53-year-old man was bitten by a shark in the Florida Keys Sunday and then drove himself to a sheriff's substation where an ambulance took him to a hospital for extensive wounds to his side, the Miami Herald reports. Chris Ostand was swimming from Founder's Park in Islamaroda when the shark struck.
A naked man was killed by a train in Volusia County this morning, the Orlando Sentinel reports. It happened about 12:30 a.m. after the CSX train's engineer saw a naked man running along the tracks in the same direction.
Two teens who went parasailing as a lark over the weekend slammed into the second floor of a Pompano Beach hotel, leaving one in critical condition. Amber White, 15, and her 17-year-old sister, Crystal, were in the air when the wind turned gusty. The rope snapped and the sisters hit a thatched-roof shelter before slamming into the second floor of the Beachcomber Resort, the Miami Herald reports. A high-wind warning was issued 40 minutes before they went parasailing, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports.
An amnesty program designed to rid Orlando streets of guns netted a rocket launcher on Saturday. That's right. An Ocoee man traded a surface-to-air missile launcher for a pair of size 3 Reebok sneakers for his daughter. The Orlando Sentinel has the report.
A college student received more than 100 stitches after being bitten by a shark at night in Sarasota Bay. Andrea Lynch, 20, said she was floating on her back near a boat when the shark bit her in her side Wednesday, shook her a little bit and then let her go, the Associated Press reports.
When she got back in the boat, she told her three friends that she might have been bitten by a shark and they thought she might be joking - or mistaken. "I reached back with my hand and felt all these gashes on me," she said, "and there was blood running down my body and pooling in the boat."
Lynch had 17 puncture wounds. Doctors said the shark's teeth got close to her lungs, but missed all major organs. A shark expert said he believed the attack was by a roughly 6-foot-long bull shark. The Sarasota Herald Tribune has more.
Photo: Bull sharks at Mote Marine Laboratory. [Times file photo]
The island iguana trapper, assisted by some bridge workers, rescued a wild coyote from the fenders on the Gasparilla Island Bridge, the Boca Beacon reports. They put a noose around her neck and put her into a dog carrier, and took her to a wildlife center in Venice. Wildlife experts there were evaluating the animal and considering releasing her back into the wild.
Exactly how the coyote got to the bridge was unclear, but animal experts say coyotes do live in Florida. Indeed, though the animals are commonly associated with the west, there have become increasingly common in the Sunshine State, according to the Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences at the Unversity of Florida.
Coyotes aren't too picky about what they eat, and they're known to adapt to populated areas, according to an article on the UF/IFAS website. They like to eat rodents, lizards, snakes, fish and insects, and consider young deer and turkey particular delicacies. For vegetables and fruit they like grasses, grains, watermelon, persimmons and wild berries. Coyotes will eat cattle, sheep and other livestock, which doesn't make farmers and ranchers too happy.
Traditional predators like the grizzly bear and the puma, don't live in Florida though the puma's cousin, the Florida panther does, but not in great numbers. Still, the living is pretty easy for a coyote.
Coyotes were introduced into Florida in the 1920s so hunting dogs would have something to chase, the IFAS says. But scientists say coyotes moving to Florida was pretty inevitable with such great habitat. Apparently coyotes consider it a good place to live.
As for the standed coyote of Gasparilla Island, she may end up back on Gasparilla Island, says a wildlife expert in Venice.
Photo: Coyotes live in the wild throughout Florida. Click to enlarge photo. [Photo courtesy University of Florida/Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences]
Nassau County sheriff's deputies found numerous draft copies of a bank robbery note in the purse and home of a Callahan woman suspected of robbing a Bank of America branch, My Nassau Sun reports.
Authorities say a woman handed the teller at the bank's drive-through line a note. The teller read the note and gave the woman cash. Days after the robbery, the FBI received an anonymous tip.
Sheriff's deputies arranged a lineup of potential suspects. Witnesses immediately identified the woman, and investigators, armed with a search warrant, searched the woman's home and vehicle.
Investigators said they found the draft copies of the robbery note on similar paper and in the same handwriting as the one used in the robbery, and about $1,600 in cash, still bundled in the bank's wrappers.
As the woman was being arrested, authorities said, she admitted writing the notes but said she was just practicing. Deputies took her to jail.
A 72-year-old man in beginning stages of Alzheimer's disease languished for two days at Orlando International Airport, the Orlando Sentinel reports. The man arrived from Wichita, Kansas, on an AirTran flight, bound for a convention at Lake Buena Vista. An employee of the contractor that provides passenger transportation left him curbside at the Delta carousels waiting for his luggage. He called his family from a Skycap cellphone and told them he was waiting for his luggage. Two days later, when they hadn't heard from him, the family called Orlando police. The man was found sleeping at the curb where he had been left. "He was very thirsty and he answered 'yes' to everything," said a police spokesman.
A rare Florida crocodile that had become something of a mascot in a ritzy Coral Gables neighborhood snatched a full-grown boxer from a back yard and ate it, the Miami Herald reports. ''He kept swimming around the canals with the dog's body in his mouth for three days,'' a resident said. ``It was disgusting. Dreadful.'' Residents want the critter gone, and state biologists are setting traps for him but so far have had no luck. Crocodiles are endangered, with only about 1,000 living in Florida. Wildlife authorities plan to relocate the croc to a more remote environment. That is, if they can catch him.
Photo: Florida crocodile. Click to enlarge photo. [iStock photo]
Capy, the only capybara (or water hog) at the Zoo Northwest Florida in Gulf Breeze is dead. It's not certain who did it, but the chief suspect is one of the adult hippos, the father of the capybara's buddy Niles, the baby hippo. Niles was killed by his father in July, the Northwest Florida Daily News reports.
The capybara is said to be the largest living rodent in the world. A native of tropical South America (Panama, Brazil, Bolivia, Argentina and Venezuela), it can grow to be 140 pounds and 4 1/2 feet long.
Capybaras that live in the wild in northwest Florida may have escaped from a wildlife research facility, according to the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission website. However, apparently some can be found farther south as well. In 2001, an adult capybara was reported killed on State Road 72 east of the Myakka River bridge in Sarasota County. Scientists have no evidence that the animals are breeding in the wild, though.
As for the zoo's dead capybara, there were no witnesses to the murder but Capy had hippo bite marks on his rump and stomach areas. "It was a terrible, terrible wound," said the zoo's vet, "but that's what hippos do."
Photo: Capybaras at the Zona Brazil exhibit at the Bristol Zoo in England. Click to enlarge photo. [Photograph by Adrian Pingstone]
Federal agents broke down the door at the home of the boss of the Outlaws Motorcycle Club in Daytona Beach and rousted him and his wife out of bed. Police forced their way into the group's clubhouse. They came looking for guns and drugs, club members said. Raids were also carried out on Outlaws' clubhouses in Jacksonville and Citrus County, the Daytona Beach News-Journal reports. The raids were part of a larger operation against the club directed by the U.S. Attorney General's office. The Associated Press reported that a federal grand jury has indicted 16 members of the gang on assault, drug distribution and weapons possession.
[Scott Keeler | Times] More photos
Two Atlantic bottlenose dolphins were spotted about 8 a.m. today by a Pinellas County employee who came to check on the progress of a dredging project in Joe's Creek in the Lealman area.
The Clearwater Marine Aquarium was called and aquarium biologists waited for permission from the National Marine Fisheries to move the dolphins. The dolphins were thought to have come up from the west during high tide in search of fish.
Biologists estimate they are two to three years old. They appeared to be in good health.
Anne Lindberg, Times staff writer
First Integrity Bank bought an Estero fish camp marina in a foreclosure auction in Fort Myers for $100, the Fort Myers News-Press reports. There were no other bidders.
Three nude teenagers early one morning jumped a fence at the DeLand Country Club and stole a flag pole. Country club officials didn't want an investigation. They just wanted to document the theft, they said, perhaps to prove they weren't making it up when they tell the story, the Orlando Sentinel reports.
A woman Orange County sheriff's deputies had arrested slipped out of her handcuffs, brazenly jumped out of a moving ambulance and escaped. Heavy traffic prevented authorities from recapturing her. The woman, who was arrested for failure to appear in court, had told deputies she was suffering a panic attack, so they sent for an ambulance, the Orlando Sentinel reports.
An 8-year-old girl whose family just moved from Ohio to DeLand heard about the hurricanes forming in the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico, and she was afraid. So she set out to go back to Columbus, on her bike. She was missing for about 45 minutes before Volusia County sheriff's deputies found her. She'd gotten about a mile but had a little more than 900 miles to go. She's safe with her parents now, the Orlando Sentinel reports.
A Boynton Beach man ended up locked in a Dumpster after carjackers stole his iPhone, Gucci wallet and 2007 Lexus. The man told police he was dumping his trash in a community receptacle about 1 a.m. A man with a black hooded sweatshirt that covered his face stuck a .38 caliber revolver in the victim's and ordered him to the ground. The men rummaged through his car, then forced the victim into the Dumpster and locked it behind him. Police are looking for the Lexus and the suspects, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports.
A Bradenton woman says two men forced her into a blue SUV and a third man held his hands over her mouth and told her that they would make sure she didn't talk about her role in a local sex scandal. The woman, a convicted prostitute, is at the center of a sex scandal in which three Bradenton police officers resigned. The Manatee Sheriff's Office says the woman's kidnapping claims don't jibe with the story she told them about a fight with her boyfriend over the weekend, the Bradenton Herald reports. The woman claimed she jumped out of the SUV and the driver tried to back over her. "Their intention was to kill me. I believe that," she said.
Three Bradenton men in green cargo pants, green T-shirts and black utility belts with Smith and Wesson handcuffs, badges, guns, pepper spray and a walkie-talkie "arrested' a suspected drug dealer, handcuffed him and stole his belongings and his cash, police say. They told the man they were Manatee County sheriff's deputies. Trouble was, they weren't. Two of the men are in jail. The third is still on the loose, the Bradenton Herald reports.
A man from Colombia bought a medical clinic in Venice and started seeing patients. One day he saw 26 patients, including a man with an ear infection. He asked a nurse, "What kind of antibiotics do you give for this?" The nurse replied, "You're the doctor." Authorities arrested the man on 26 counts of practicing medine without a license, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reports.
Pickle, the tiny Pacific parrotlet, has a new home. It wasn't supposed to be that way. Pickle's owners boarded her at a pet store in Bradenton. Trouble is, the pet store owner sold her. Accidently, he says. "I'll pay the guy double what he paid me is he'll just bring back the bird," the chagrined pet store owner said. More here.
Photo: Pickle, the Pacific parrolet is 1 year old. Click on photo to enlarge. [Photo courtesy of Brad Bosman]
A bear wandered out of the woods and into a south Orlando subdivision. It had people in the neighborhood so perturbed they called 911. Police officers tried for 45 minutes to scare the bear back into the woods using lights and sirens. The bear went into a garage instead. The police ensnared the bear using restraint poles usually used for dogs. They had nooses around its head and its legs. The bear didn't like the nooses. One police officer zapped the bear with a Taser. Then another one did, too. The bear passed out. Then the bear died, the Orlando Sentinel reports.
Photo: Florida black bear. [Photo by Jim Phillips, Courtesy Southwest Florida Water Management District]
There's a two-story house in Miami where chiseled young men are paid $1,200, plus room, board and meals, to live for a month and have sex with each other on schedule. Visitors to a Web site, CocoDorm.com, can, for a fee, watch live video streams of the young men.
Miami code enforcers say the owner is operating an illegal adult entertainment business because the house they are in is zoned for residential use only. The operator of the porn website argued with Miami officials that the house is legal because no business is transacted there. All sales and distribution take place elsewhere, he says.
City code enforcers aren't buying the argument. They're shutting the operation down, the Miami Herald reports.
A 23-year-old St. Augustine man drove his pickup truck into a Catholic church and told deputies he was "mad with God," WJXT TV Channel 4 reports. The crash damaged the door and a wall of the church. The man was taken to jail.
A 15-year-old boy in Sarasota shot a video on his cell phone of a man jumping off the 60-foot John Ringling Causway Bridge. The man was in stable condition after breaking ribs. The boy was charged with culpable negligence, a misdemeanor. Physics experts say a person jumping off the highest point of that bridge would hit the water at about 43 mph, the Sarasota Herald Tribune reports.
Kevin Alderman didn't bring sex to "Second Life." He just made it better. The 46-year-old entrepreneur recognized four years ago that people would pay to equip their online selves – which start out with the smooth anatomy of a Barbie or Ken doll – with realistic genitalia and even more to add some sexy moves. Business at Eros LLC has been brisk. One of his creations, the SexGen Platinum, has gotten so popular that he's now had to hire lawyers to track down the flesh-and-blood person behind the online identity, or avatar, that he says illegally copied and sold it.
Photo: Kevin Alderman manipulates his "Second Life" online avatar Stroker Serpentine at his home-based office in Lutz. Click on photo to enlarge. [Associated Press]
The village of Tequesta hasn't had a homicide in two decades. And some members of the police force may not watch CSI: Miami regularly. Someone on the police force may have cleaned up blood at a murder crime scene with bleach before investigators arrived, the Palm Beach Post reports. The case has been turned over to the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office. One Tequesta police supervisor has resigned and a second remains on paid leave. And authorities don't know whether or not they should charge a homeowner with murder in the case of a man who died from two gunshot wounds to the chest outside his home.
Authorities say a lightning stroke that came without rain or thunder killed a landscaper as he trimmed weeds along a lake in Parkland, a community in northwest Broward County. He was the third person killed by lightning in the Broward-Palm Beach area in less than a month, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports. Though the landscaping crew saw storm clouds in the distance they did not plan to stop working right away because it had not started raining and they did not see any lightning before their co-worker was struck.
A man was seen driving erratically from Ramrod Key to Key West. Police were called and when they arrived they found a concerned citizen holding the driver down on the pavement. He told police he pulled the erratic driver from his car at a stop sign because of his concern for the safety of others. When police asked the DUI suspect if he understood his Miranda rights he told them the only health problem he had was bunions on his feet, the Key West Citizen reports.
Two men in black ski masks who tried to rob a Brinks armored truck in Fort Myers have a huge price on their heads -- $50,000. The company is offering the reward for information leading to the capture of the men, one of whom shot into the truck during the botched caper. Brinks offered $25,000 the day of the attempt, Aug. 2, but raised the ante because they're particularly concerned that a shot was fired at one of the guards as he retreated to his truck, the Fort Myers News-Press reports.
The flamingos at the Hialeah Race Track are world famous. And though the track hasn't had a horse race since 2001, the 300 flamingos that once flew over the track still live inside its 1 1/8-mile racing oval. Now some of the offspring of the Hialeah birds have hatched at the Oklahoma City Zoo. And they're living at more than a dozen wildlife parks acrtoss the country. The first flock of birds came to Hialeah Park in the 1920s from the Caribbean but they soon flew back. Park officials gathered up a new flock in the 1930s and they stayed.
Photo: New flamingos are taken for daily walks at their home in the Oklahoma City Zoo. They are originally from Hialeah Race Track in South Florida. Click photo to enlarge. [Associated Press]
Continue reading "Hialeah flamingos go to Oklahoma and beyond" »
A 16-year-old boy says he "made up stuff" when he was talking to investigators about being molested so he could leave. He said he felt pressured to tell investigators that he was moslested after he was questioned at his high school for more than four hours. So prosecutors are dropping the case. The man who had been charged with child molestatation and sexual assault has been saved again. Five months ago he survived jumping off a cruise ship and spending eight hours at sea until rescuers plucked him out of the Atlantic Ocean, the Orlando Sentinel reports.
A murder trial defendant, who is representing himself, asked potential jurors if they could put his religious past aside. As recently as last week, the man said he was a member of the Church of Satan and asked to be allowed to wear special Satanic garb during his trial, the Miami Herald reports. But evidently over the weekend he converted to God. The prosecutor said he intends to call as witness a Miami-Dade police sergeant who will testify that the defendant told him he had "an insatiable desire to eat human flesh."
A state inspector says a Sunny Isles Beach restaurant manager tried to bribe her with cash and a good deal on gold teeth. The restaurant owner says it's all a misunderstanding. She says the manager, who is a Russian immigrant, doesn't understand or speak English, the Miami Herald reports. The inspector recorded the coversation, which she says also included an offer of $1,500 cash. The owner says the manager's son is a cosmetic dentist and could help the inspector. "This woman, the inspector, she does not have good teeth," the owner said.
It
wasn't hard for thieves to guess when Charles Billi would be out. The
Miami newsman anchors WSVN's weekend news shows at 5, 6 and 10 p.m.
After Saturday's last broadcast, a police officer called to tell Billi
his Miami Shores home had been hit. "He said, 'Charles, you're not
going to like this. Your TV is in the middle of your front yard,' "
Billi recounted to Florida Today.
The thieves apparently dropped
Billi's high-def TV after being seen by a neighbor. They took about 300
DVDs, watches, electronics and a big jar of spare change, Billi said.
"Every piece of furniture was flipped upside down," he said. "They
trashed the place."
Miami-Dade County police say a man attempting to rob a security guard in Miami Gardens early Sunday managed to accidentally shoot his accomplice in the eye. At one point during the incident, a gun was aimed at the security guard who considered himself a lucky man because he didn't get shot. "Someone upstairs is watching out for me," he told the Miami Herald.
A rare ghost orchid, first spotted in July in Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, is blooming again, the Miami Herald reports. The plant is believed to grow naturally only in Cuba, the Bahamas and Southwest Florida. The blossom is white and has thin, spindly stems that virtually disappear against the dark backdrop of the swamps in which it thrives, giving it the appearance of being suspended in midair.
The plant is a central character in Susan Orlean's celebrated The Orchid Thief, a 1998 book about a rogue plant dealer in Southwest Florida who is arrested for taking the rare orchid and other species from the Fakahatchee Strand State Preserve southwest of Naples.
In a 1995 article in The New Yorker magazine that was the basis for the book, Orlean described plant dealer John Laroche as "a tall guy, skinny as a stick, pale-eyed, slouch-shouldered, and sharply handsome, in spite of the fact that he is missing all of his front teeth." Orlean's book tells Laroche's story as an orchid enthusiast who hatches a plan with the cooperation of the Seminole tribe to build a nursery and orchid greenhouse.
Laroche was arrested in 1994 in the Fakahatchee swamp with three Seminole tribesmen with the ghost orchid and other plants they planned to propogate in the nursery. Laroche had discovered a loophole in the law that he believed allowed Seminoles to take the rare plants. Laroche eventually pleaded no contest to charges of removing endangered plants and was fined and barred from the Fakahatchee.
A 2002 film, Adaptation, was based more or less on Orlean's book but was really more about adapting a book to a screenplay than it was about the Orlean's book. Actor Chris Cooper won an Academy Award for best support actor for his role as Laroche in the film. Meryl Streep, who played Orlean in the film, won a nomination for best supporting actress. Nicholas Cage also starred in Adaptation as the screenwriter hired adapt Orlean's book for the screen. The Cage character soon realizes the impossibility of the task, and veers wildly from the original plot.
Orchid photo: Ghost Orchid by Mike Fournier, Pompano Beach, Florida [Photo by Mick Fournier]
Film photo: Chris Cooper as John Laroche in Adaptation. [Columbia Pictures]
Ronald Tridico of Windermere bought a new $400,000 Lamborghini the other day. It was his dream car. On Friday his new yellow sports car flew around a curve on State Road 429, a toll road near Orlando, and crashed, the Orlando Sentinel reports. The Florida Highway Patrol says Tridico was speeding when he took the curve and lost control. He overcorrected and skidded 1,200 feet before the crash. Tridico says another vehicle cut him off. Authorities didn't believe him.
Video of former astronaut Lisa Nowak confined in an 8-by-10-foot holding cell at Orlando International Airport after her arrest in February show a sad, tired woman trapped in the unblinking gaze of a video camera. During three hours in the windowless room, she tried to explain the hammer, BB gun and knife that police found in her car, the Orlando Sentinel reports. She talked about the romantic rival she had frightened in the airport. And she despaired for her future. Her frenzied drive from Houston to Orlando became fodder for late-night TV comedians.
The Port St. Lucie woman charged in an alleged $1.26-million scam involving her adopted children cashed in $62,000 life insurance policy and put her home up for sale as investigators closed in, court records show. The Associated Press says that Judith Leekin (left) lived in a five-bedroom house with lavish furnishings and a pool, but forced all the children to sleep together on the floor in a utility room, according to a police investigator's report.
The children were kept in a room with the knobs reversed, allowing someone to be locked inside, the report says. All have scars on their wrists and ankles, apparently from being tied and handcuffed. None appears to have more than a fourth-grade education, authorities say.
Florida officials had previously investigated abuse allegations against her, but were stymied in 1999 because New York authorities couldn't find her records. Local investigators caught on last month after Leekin allegedly abandoned an 18-year-old woman at a store in St. Petersburg – 200 miles from home. More here.
Photo: [Port St. Lucie Sheriff's Department via Associated Press]
Gainesville installed donation meters as a new plan for discouraging panhandling and feeding the homeless. They're blue and white and look a lot like parking meters. They're found on downtown streets. Money collected from the meters will go to Alachua County Coalition for the Homeless and Hungry. The idea is for people who feel moved to give spare change to panhandlers to feed the meters instead, the Gainesville Sun reports.
A man who testified against his brother in the rape and killing of 11-year-old Carlie Brucia said he smoked crack cocaine in the courthouse bathroom before getting back on the witness stand. John Smith said he used drugs as sheriff's deputies stood nearby and that they knew what he was doing, the Associated Press reports. More here.
Jacksonville police set up an escort service and ran ads on Craig's list and in the Jacksonville Times-Union. The undercover prostitution sting netted 33 arrests. Among those arrested on soliciting prostitution charges: business executives, Navy men, a firefighter and a former high school basketball coach, the Jacksonville Times-Union reports.
Police say two transients staying at a Daytona Beach homeless shelter offered a woman there $1,000 to use her car in a bank robbery they were planning. The woman told the cops, and authorities arrested the two men just as they were approaching a Bank of America branch in Edgewater, the Daytona Beach News-Journal reports.
An African grey parrot named Bogart was snatched by wild hawk from his perch on the pool deck in his owner's Ormond Beach home -- and lived, perhaps, to tell about it. Bogart can talk but he hasn't said much about the ordeal. Numerous trips to a vet have him recovering, and his prognosis is good, the Daytona Beach News-Journal reports.
Two 18-year-old men and a 17-year-old boy beat a homeless man with a 2-by-4 at a convenience store in Palm Beach County, sheriff's deputies say. The homeless man stopped the attack when he slashed one of the men with a shard of glass, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports.
A Broward County sheriff's deputy was shot and killed early today in Pompano Beach, the second shooting of a Broward deputy this week, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports.
They met on the Internet. She lived in Cuba. He lived in Miami. This morning they met in person -- on the beach at Key Biscayne. She arrived with a contingent of 52 wet and sunburned Cubans who had been at sea for three days to get to the United States. "That's my girlfriend," he said. The Miami Herald has the whole story.
A Stuart woman gave birth to a 6-pound, 2-ounce baby in her car next to a railroad track because a slow train in the wee hours of the morning blocked her way to a hospital. Her 11-year-old sister helped with the delivery. The sister mostly remembered the gooey parts after the birth. "She's trying to show her to me, and I'm freaking out. It looked like an alien," the girl said. The Palm Beach Post has the story.
Police say a 24-year-old Pensacola man ran out of gas west of Marianna on U.S, 90, walked about a mile, randomly picked a woman's house and found the door unlocked. Investigators say the man killed the woman, stole her car and went on his way. He was arrested and charged with murder, according to the Tallahassee Democrat.
A cab driver in Fort Walton Beach drove his cab into the brick wall of a house while an assaliant hung on the vehicle, apparently trying to rob the driver. No one was hurt in the cab or the house, but the assailant ran away empty handed, the Northwest Florida Daily News reports.
Five Miami men shot 88 ducks in Hendry County south of Clewston, picked through the ones they liked and left the rest. They were arrested by Wildlife Conservation Commission officers. They pleaded guilty to killing more than the legal limit of waterfowl, the Naples Daily News reports. A federal judge fined the men $24,000 and ordered them not to hunt for 3 1/2 years. "These folks were greedy," a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agent said.
A man in Fort Lauderdale shot his gun at a robber who was making off with four bottles of vodka from a liquor store. He thought he was being a Good Samaritan. Now he's in jail charged with aggravated assault in the incident, the Miami Herald reports.
