See also “Four Miami Pimps Arrested For Luring Foster Care Children Into Prostitution.”Though no formal charges had yet been filed against Florida Department of Children and Families worker Daniel LaCroix, the 46-year-old man was arrested on Saturday for trying to flee the country after his name came up in another…
Judges postpone trials across Florida every day for all kinds of reasons — delayed depositions, conflicts with other cases, motions from attorneys, illnesses in the family. (Just ask Carlos Bertonatti — two and half years later, still no trial.)But there’s at least one reason that won’t stick: Wanting to compete…
Though final toxicology results on Rudy Eugene’s blood turned up only traces of marijuana, experts say there’s no way pot could have caused him to eat a man’s face. Instead, some suggest he might have been under the influence of a bath-salts-like substance that laboratories are not yet equipped to…
You got a brand new BMW. You’re feeling fly. You parked it on Miami Beach to go have dinner at Juvia. One thing leads to another and wind up at Mansion until 3 in the morning. You finally get back to your car, and whats this? Oh no, your headlights…
Turns out Rudy Eugene, the “Miami Zombie,” was probably not under the influence of bath salts after all. It had been previously reported that Eugene had marijuana in his system, and after further tests, that’s all the medical examiners found…
Greyston Garcia, a 26-year-old Miami resident who beat a murder rap thanks to the craziest interpretation yet of Florida’s Stand Your Ground law, was killed Tuesday by a stray bullet in a gang shooting. His death came three months after second-degree murder charges against him were dropped in the fatal stabbing of…
Forget LeBron. We’re going to go ahead and call James and Ruth Kauff the true heroes of the Miami Heat’s NBA Finals run. The Deerfield husband and wife were arrested at the Finals Game 4 against the since-vanquished Oklahoma Thunder after American Airlines Arena security busted them trying to use…
Four men were arrested yesterday on charges of recruiting underage girls in the foster care system to work as prostitutes in a Homestead brothel. Also mentioned in the same human trafficking investigation is Jean LaCroix, a Florida Department of Children and Families child protective investigator. He’s suspected of repeatedly having…
This synthetic drug-induced zombie apocalypse is apparently now spreading outside of Florida. Naturally, Texas was the next stop. A man there got high on K-2, a form of synthetic marijuana, started chasing his neighbor, and then ate his dog…
Blogs like Gizmodo erupted this weekend when a YouTube video surfaced showing a hovering, flashing drone flying above the crowds at last month’s Memorial Day weekend in South Beach. The video was all the more eyebrow-raising because the Miami-Dade Police Department actually has a drone and is one of only…
A suspected car thief and a Hialeah police officer are both in the hospital this afternoon after a chain of events involving a hit-and-run accident and a police-involved shooting. The officer, who has not yet been identified, attempted to stop what was believed to have been a stolen car near the…
Two months ago we wrote about the bizarre case of Yathomas Riley, an undefeated heavyweight boxer from Florida City accused of trying to kill his girlfriend in 2010. Prosecutors claim that Riley shot Koketia King in a jealous rage. But the boxer and his family argue that King tried to…
Six years ago, Miami New Times profiled a group of teens from Miami-Dade taking part in the unconventional-to-south Florida sport of ice hockey. Known as the Miami Toros Junior Hockey Club, the team was coached and owned by a Long Island native named Joseph Timpone. The article notes how Timpone…
In the days after killing unarmed Miami teenager Trayvon Martin in February, George Zimmerman wrote a narrative for police about what happened that night. In neat, loopy cursive, Zimmerman claims that Martin slammed his head into the ground until “it felt like it was going to explode,” and told him…
An 80-year-old woman was admitted to Coral Gables Hospital on Friday and got more than an operation. She also got visits from a strange woman who fed, hugged and kissed her. The patient thought she worked for the hospital. Hospital staff thought she was a family member. Turns out she…
Give Ronald Rolfes points for honesty. The heavyset, 31-year-old Georgia man was caught on Sunday secretly recording women undressing backstage during the Hooters International Swimsuit Pageant at the Fontainebleau Hotel. When police confronted him with the video evidence of his crimes, he had a simple explanation.”Man to man, I did…
Allen Stanford — the massive Ponzi-schemer and full-time nutter who put his billions in illicit profits into a Coral Gables castle and cricket tournaments in the Caribbean — was sentenced to more than a century of jail time for his crimes today. A federal judge in Texas sentenced the financier,…
What can $7.3 million buy you nowadays? How about 459 pounds of cocaine?That was the amount seized by U.S. Customs and Border Protection on May 29 at the Miami Seaport. CBP officers discovered 169 bricks of coke in eight cardboard boxes in a shipping container. The container came off a…
Billy Corben, Miami’s master documentarian, has found himself innocent on charges of being a “Tweeting twit.” Corben, director of films like The U and Cocaine Cowboys, pulled jury duty earlier this year and updated his Twitter and Facebook followers about the inanities of sitting on a jury, but never mentioned…
Mark Gold, the lawyer who founded and owns the Ticket Clinic firm, found himself so drunk at the Goldrush strip club in downtown Miami back in 2010 that he wound up charging nearly $19,000 to his credit card. He ended up suing Goldrush, and claimed they never should have accepted his money…
Luis Davilo was just livin’ the dream — drinking some beers, cruising his A-Team van around suburban Orlando, pityin’ fools — when the Man unwisely intervened. An Orlando cop pulled Davilo over for not having his lights on. That’s when Davilo sprang into Mr. T-worthy action, repeatedly ramming the cop…
Among the many stark questions at the heart of the Trayvon Martin case is one simple query with huge implications: Does Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law encourage guys like George Zimmerman to take justice into their own hands? Or, as Florida Republicans argue, does it deter crime by ensuring anyone…
