A 13-foot alligator was killed by Florida officials after it was reportedly seen carrying human remains on Friday.
The Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office said officers responded to an area near 134th Avenue North and 121st Street in Ridgecrest, Florida, on Friday after getting reports of a body in the waterway, according to FOX 13.
With help of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, the alligator was “humanely killed.” Blood could be seen near the alligator.
A witness told Spectrum Bay News 9 that he could see a body in the alligator’s mouth.
The Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office said officers responded to an area near 134th Avenue North and 121st Street in Ridgecrest, Florida, on Friday after getting reports of a body in the waterway, according to FOX 13. (FOX 13)
“I could tell there was a body in his mouth, so I started recording,” JaMarcus Bullard said. “I came down to the fire department and reported it to them.”
“I could tell there was a body in his mouth…”
Terri Williams, who was visiting the area when the incident happened, said she was shocked to see an alligator.
The sheriff’s office didn’t release additional information about the incident. (FOX 13)
“I would’ve never dreamt that an alligator would be in this area,” Williams said. “Of course, I know there’s a lake across the street, and I know about the lake in Taylor Park, but not in this neighborhood. No, I would have never thought that.”
Reza Baluchi was spotted in a “manifestly unsafe” vessel, which resembled a hamster wheel, around 70 miles from the east coast of the United States. He refused to come off and had threatened to blow himself up, in what turned out to be a hoax.
Reza Baluchi with a similar contraption in 2016. Pic: South Florida Sun-Sentinel via AP
According to court documents, the USCG judged the makeshift boat was “manifestly unsafe” and kept afloat by buoys and wiring.
His voyage began just days before Hurricane Franklin – a category four storm at its peak – hit parts of the Caribbean and moved towards the US.
But Mr Baluchi refused to step off the vessel for three days until officers managed to safely extract him and bring him back to shore two days later, court papers state.
“Baluchi informed the USCG officers that he had a Florida registration on board his vessel, but he was unable to locate it,” court documents state.
“He also advised USCG officers his intended destination was London, England.”
Mr Baluchi showed officers he was armed with two 12in knives – the size of a 30cm ruler – and would attempt to kill himself if they tried to remove him, the documents add.
Officers remained on the scene and on the next day, 27 August, Mr Baluchi allegedly threatened to “blow himself up”.
This morning, the #FCSO responded to a call about a vessel washing ashore in the Hammock area.
US president offers support to people of Florida after Governor Ron DeSantis, a potential presidential rival, rejected a meeting with him.
US President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden speak with a woman during their tour of Hurricane Idalia’s destruction, Live Oak, Florida, US, September 2, 2023 [Evelyn Hockstein/ Reuters]Joe Biden, the president of the United States, has surveyed the destruction caused by Hurricane Idalia in the state of Florida but did not meet with Governor Ron DeSantis, a potential presidential rival, who opted not to come.
Biden offered support and condolences to those affected by Idalia on Saturday after taking an aerial tour and receiving a briefing from local officials as well as first responders in Live Oak, a town hit hard by the storm.
He saw houses with fallen trees on them and said that no one “intelligent” could doubt that climate change was happening.
“I’m here today to deliver a clear message to the people of Florida and throughout the southeast,” Biden said as he spoke outdoors, near a church that had parts of its sheet metal roof peeled back by Idalia’s powerful winds and a home half crushed by a fallen tree.
“As I’ve told your governor, if there’s anything your state needs, I’m ready to mobilise that support,” he continued. “Anything they need related to these storms. Your nation has your back and we’ll be with you until the job is done.”
But politics hung over Biden’s trip.
The president, a Democrat who has spoken to DeSantis multiple times this week, said on Friday that he and the Republican governor would meet in person. But DeSantis’s spokesperson said on the same day that the governor had no plans to meet Biden, adding that “the security preparations alone that would go into setting up such a meeting would shut down ongoing recovery efforts”.
The governor’s decision caught the White House off guard.
Asked if he was disappointed that DeSantis did not come, Biden said, “No, I’m not disappointed.”
“He may have had other reasons. … But he did help us plan this,” Biden told reporters. “He sat with FEMA and decided where we should go where would be the least disruption,” he added, referring to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Hurricane Idalia has wrought havoc in Florida, leaving 250,000 homes without power and submerging properties. The storm has now been downgraded as it heads into Georgia – but storm surges and rainfall pose new risks.
Idalia is now a tropical storm – what has happened so far?
Flooded roads, evacuations and downed power lines – there’s no doubt Idalia has caused havoc in the US over the last 24 hours.
It was originally classed as a category 3 hurricane, but as the day comes to an end it has been downgraded to a tropical storm.
Here’s what has happened so far:
Idalia roared ashore early this morning with 125 mph winds and unleashed devastation along a wide stretch of the Gulf Coast.
Homes and vehicles were submerged, streets turned into rivers, and small boats were unmoored before the hurricane went sweeping into Georgia.
Almost 438,000 customers in Florida and Georgia lost power while rushing water covered streets near the coast.
The centre of the hurricane then moved inland, causing high winds to shred signs, send sheet metal flying and snap tall trees.
Idalia came ashore in the lightly populated Big Bend region, where the Florida Panhandle curves into the peninsula.
It made landfall as a high-end category 3 hurricane with maximum sustained winds near 125 mph.
There were no confirmed storm deaths in Florida, although fatal traffic accidents in two counties may end up being storm-related, Florida governor Ron DeSantis said.
State officials, 5,500 National Guardsman and rescue crews were in search-and-recovery mode, inspecting bridges, clearing toppled trees and looking for anyone in distress in one of Florida’s most rural regions.
On the island of Cedar Key, downed trees and debris blocked roads, and propane tanks exploded.
Florida residents living in vulnerable coastal areas were ordered to pack up and leave as Hurricane Idalia gained steam in the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, and authorities warned of a “catastrophic storm surge and destructive winds” when the storm moves ashore Wednesday morning.
Idalia was packing sustained winds of 110 mph (177 kph) early Wednesday, after growing into a Category 2 system on Tuesday afternoon. It was projected to make landfall later Wednesday morning as a Category 4 storm with winds of at least 130 mph (209 kph) in the lightly populated Big Bend region, where the Florida Panhandle curves into the peninsula. The result could be a big blow to a state still dealing with lingering damage from last year’s Hurricane Ian.
The National Weather Service in Tallahassee called Idalia “an unprecedented event” since no major hurricanes on record have ever passed through the bay abutting the Big Bend.
On the island of Cedar Key, Commissioner Sue Colson joined other city officials in packing up documents and electronics at City Hall on Tuesday. She had a message for the almost 900 residents who were under mandatory orders to evacuate. More than a dozen state troopers went door to door warning residents that storm surge could rise as high as 15 feet (4.5 meters).
“One word: Leave,” Colson said. “It’s not something to discuss.”
Gov. Ron DeSantis repeated the warning at Tuesday afternoon news conference.
“You really gotta go now. Now is the time,” he said. Earlier, the governor stressed that residents didn’t necessarily need to leave the state, but should “get to higher ground in a safe structure.”
Tybee Island, Ga., resident Bryan Moore helps his friend board up his house on the island, Tuesday, Aug. 29, 2023, ahead of Hurricane Idalia. (Stephen B. Morton/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)
Not everyone was heeding the warning. Andy Bair, owner of the Island Hotel, said he intended to “babysit” his bed-and-breakfast, which predates the Civil War. The building has not flooded in the almost 20 years he has owned it, not even when Hurricane Hermine flooded the city in 2016.
“Being a caretaker of the oldest building in Cedar Key, I just feel kind of like I need to be here,” Bair said. “We’ve proven time and again that we’re not going to wash away. We may be a little uncomfortable for a couple of days, but we’ll be OK eventually.”
Tolls were waived on highways out of the danger area, shelters were open and hotels prepared to take in evacuees. More than 30,000 utility workers were gathering to make repairs as quickly as possible in the hurricane’s wake. About 5,500 National Guard troops were activated.
Hurricane Idalia gained fury over the Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday as it crawled toward Florida’s Gulf Coast, forcing evacuations in low-lying coastal areas expected to be swamped when the powerful storm hits on Wednesday morning.
Idalia was generating maximum sustained winds of 105 miles per hour (169 kph) by early Tuesday evening, and its intensity will ratchet higher before it slams ashore, according to the Miami-based National Hurricane Center (NHC).
By that time, the storm was forecast to reach Category 3 strength – classified as a major hurricane, with maximum sustained winds of at least 111 mph (179 kph) – on the five-step Saffir-Simpson wind scale.
The hurricane was upgraded on Tuesday evening to a Category 2 after its top wind speeds surpassed 95 mph (153 kph), feeding on the warm, open waters of the gulf.
Idalia’s most dangerous feature, however, appeared to be the powerful surge of wind-driven seawater it is expected to deliver to barrier islands and other low-lying areas along the coast.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination next year, urged residents in vulnerable communities to heed orders to move to higher ground, warning that the storm surge could cause life-threatening floods.
“They’re expecting some fatalities, so I don’t want to be one of them,” said Rene Hoffman, 62, of Steinhatchee, Florida, a coastal town in the area where Idalia is expected to make landfall. She owns a food stand that she lashed to her husband’s pickup truck to keep it from washing or blowing away.
“This is scary, you know, to think that water could come this high,” she said as she gathered her prescription medications and prepared to leave her home. “We’ve never had water up here before.”
The NHC said Idalia’s center would likely hit Florida’s coastline somewhere in the Big Bend region, where the state’s northern panhandle curves into the Gulf side of the Florida Peninsula, roughly bounded by the inland cities of Gainesville and Tallahassee, the state capital.
Sparsely populated compared with the Tampa-St. Petersburg area to the south, the Big Bend features a marshy coast, threaded with freshwater springs and rivers, and a cluster of small offshore islands forming Cedar Key, an historic fishing village devastated in 1896 by a hurricane’s storm surge.
Most of Florida’s 21 million residents, along with many in Georgia and South Carolina, were under hurricane, tropical storm and storm surge warnings and advisories. State emergency declarations were issued in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina.
At the White House, U.S. President Biden said he and DeSantis were “in constant contact,” adding that he had assured the governor federal disaster assistance would remain in place for as “long as it takes, and we’ll make sure they have everything they need.”
Gulf energy producers were taking precautions as well. U.S. oil company Chevron evacuated staff from three oil production platforms, while Kinder Morgan planned to shut a petroleum pipeline.
Idalia-related disruptions extended to Florida’s Atlantic coast at Cape Canaveral, where the Tuesday launch of a rocket carrying a U.S. Space Force intelligence satellite was delayed indefinitely due to the hurricane.
Idalia grew from a tropical storm into a hurricane early on Tuesday, a day after passing west of Cuba, where it damaged homes and flooded villages.
A man places plywood in front of a store ahead of the arrival of Hurricane Idalia in Cedar Key, Florida, U.S., August 29, 2023. REUTERS/Marco Bello
By Tuesday evening, the storm was churning about 155 miles (250 km) southwest of Tampa as it crept northward.
Idalia is in line to become the fourth major hurricane to strike Florida over the past seven years, following Irma in 2017, Michael in 2018 and Ian, which peaked at Category 5, last September.
UP TO 15 FEET OF STORM SURGE
In Sarasota – a city hard-hit by Ian last year – Milton Bontrager’s home was boarded and stocked with food, water and a generator.
“I don’t panic, I prepare,” said Bontrager, 40, who runs six charter fishing boats in Venice along the Gulf Coast near Tampa.
He stopped taking customers out days ago so he could secure the boats. His biggest craft is tied down to a floating dock with 16 lines and equipped with battery-powered pumps that turn on automatically if the boat starts taking on water.
Black people were targeted by a ‘white man in his early 20s’ in a store in Jacksonville.
A gun painted with swastikas. Pic: Action News Jax 2
Three black people have been killed in a “racially motivated” shooting in Florida.
Two men and one woman were shot dead in a Dollar General store in Jacksonville by a man in his early 20s in what the mayor has called a “hate-filled crime”.
Jacksonville’s sheriff said the suspect, an unidentified white man in his 20s, “targeted black people” in the shooting before killing himself.
“Plainly put, this shooting was racially motivated and he hated black people,” Sheriff T K Waters said at a news conference.
Sheriff Waters said the gunman used a Glock handgun and an AR-15 style rifle emblazoned with swastikas during his killing spree which occurred shortly before 2pm local time.
Residents talk with Jacksonville police officers near the scene. Pic: AP
The gunman reportedly left several manifestos littered with racial epithets detailing his hatred of black people.
Sheriff Waters added there was no indication that the attacker was part of a larger group.
He had driven from neighbouring Clay County and had sent his father a text message telling him to check his computer.
The father found the writings and the family called 911, but the shooting had already begun.
Earlier, Mayor Donna Deegan told WJXT “there are a number of fatalities” inside the store but did not give a precise number.
Numerous police officers were in the area near Edward Waters University, a small historically black university.
“This is unacceptable,” Ms Deegan told the station. “One shooting is too much but these mass shootings are really hard to take.”
Jacksonville City Council member Ju’Coby Pittman told the station the gunman is dead. She did not give further details.
“My heart is heavy. I am tired of all of the shootings,” she said.
Sherri Onks, the special agent in charge of the Jacksonville FBI office, said federal officials had opened a civil rights investigation and would pursue the incident as a hate crime.
“Hate crimes are always and will always remain a top priority for the FBI because they are not only an attack on a victim, they’re also meant to threaten and intimidate an entire community,” Ms Onks said.
A Florida woman said she thought she was going to die after she was impaled in the back by a stingray’s venomous tail spine while wading at a beach south of Tampa in Ruskin.
“I was trying to stay as calm as I could,” Kristie O’Brien told FOX 13 this week of the incident at Bahia Beach. “But I was certain that I was going to die because, I mean, like everyone has like this picture of Steve Irwin when he literally was punctured in his chest.”
Irwin, known as the “The Crocodile Hunter,” died in 2006 after he was pierced in the heart by a stingray barb while filming in the Great Barrier Reef, causing him to bleed to death.
O’Brien remained in the hospital Friday, three days after she was stabbed more than four inches deep in the back by a Southern stingray, reportedly missing her lung by centimeters, while leaning back in knee-deep water.
Kristie O’Brien said the stingray punctured her back more than four inches deep and just missed her lung. (FOX 13/Kristie O’Brien)
“As soon as I hit the water, I felt like I had been stung by something,” she told FOX 13. She said her husband was the first to see the stingray hanging off of her. O’Brien said she knew not to pull the stingray barb out herself.
Paramedics cut the stingray at the base of its tail while she was still at the beach and its spine was removed after she got to the hospital.
She remains at the hospital being treated for poisoning due to the stingray’s venom.
Although stingray attacks are rare as they generally only react defensively, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission recommends shuffling your feet when you enter the water so the bottom-dwelling fish, which often bury itself in the sand, can swim away before being stepped on.
Gone was the helicopter, but Donald Trump on Saturday renewed his reputation for defying norms and creating a mega-celebrity’s spectacle at the Iowa State Fair.
Trump, in fewer than two hours on the steaming fairgrounds in Des Moines, attracted thousands of sweating, chanting supporters to his stops at the Iowa Pork Producers tent, a baby farm animal exhibit and a popular Grand Concourse pub.
All the while, Trump not-so-subtly tried to set himself apart from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Trump’s main rival with more than five months until Iowa’s leadoff caucuses and who was on the fairgrounds at the same time.
Just as DeSantis and his family were wrapping up their day at the fair, meeting with Iowa Republican leaders and activists, Trump descended into the huge scrum of backers accompanied by about a dozen Florida U.S. House members, a shot at DeSantis who is making an aggressive pitch to Iowa Republicans.
Trump spoke little to the public in his short time at the fair, except to talk individually to some fairgoers. However, he repeated during remarks to hundreds crammed into the fair favorite “Steer and Stein” the disproven claim that the 2020 election was “rigged,” and that “we got millions and millions more votes.”
Instead, while most candidates seeking caucus support tout Iowa political endorsements, Trump spent most of his public remarks introducing Florida lawmakers who traveled with him to Iowa. The effort, Trump aides said, demonstrates feelings of those who know DeSantis best, but also clearly stoke outrage among those who feel the former president has been persecuted with the two federal indictments he now faces.
“So to all my friends in Iowa when you see them come for this man, know that they are coming for this movement, and they are coming for all of us,” said Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla.
Before taking his three children to ride bumper cars and the Ferris wheel, DeSantis boasted about the delegation of state lawmakers in Iowa that flanked him when reporters asked about the Florida representatives surrounding Trump.
NEW video shows two murder suspects, one only 12 years old, after they were arrested in a series of killings that left three teens dead.
Cops are searching for a third teen suspect after Layla Silvernail and Camille Quarles, both 16, and an unnamed 17-year-old male were killed in Ocklawaha, Florida, between March 30 and April 1.
Layla Silvernail, 16, was the first victim discovered by police on March 30Credit: gofundmeCamille Quarles, 16, was found inside Silvernail’s partially submerged car on April 1Credit: GoFundMeThe Marion County Sheriff’s Office shared footage of one suspect, 12-year-old Christopher Atkins, being escorted by cops after his arrestRobert Robinson, 17, is also in custody and Sheriff Billy Woods said all three suspects were members of a ‘wannabe’ gang that’s committed other crimes in the areaCredit: Marion County Sheriff’s Office
More information has been released about two suspects – Christopher Atkins, 12, and Robert Robinson, 17, – who were arrested by the Marion County Sheriff’s Office on Thursday night.
A third suspect, 16-year-old Tahj Brewton, remains at large and police are offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to his arrest.
After Atkins was taken into custody, police shared a video of the shirtless 12-year-old being escorted out of a building and into a squad car as he looked straight ahead.
The clip also shows Robinson, who appeared stoic and disheveled, being walked out of the building after his arrest.
“Each and every one of them in some shape way or form was associated with a gang,” Sheriff Billy Woods said at a press conference.
“There is no honor among thieves, and at some point, these three individuals turned on our three victims and murdered them.”
The suspects left behind significant evidence, Woods said, and were all members of a larger “wannabe gang” that has committed other crimes in the rural county between Orlando and Gainesville.
Investigators have yet to provide any other details about what led up to the killings, which sparked rumors of a serial killer in the small Florida town.
