Cuba is one of the richest pipelines on earth for world-class baseball talent. It’s also one of the most treacherous places for Major League Baseball teams to recruit. Thanks to the embargo, defectors have to risk perilous journeys across the Gulf and through Latin America before they can snag big-money…
Fifteen-year-old Federico Tamborrel was learning to drive on the Turnpike last January with his dad riding shotgun when he swerved to avoid another car. That’s when he saw what every student driver dreads most: Flashing blue-and-red lights in his mirror. But the traffic stop soon turned into a whole different…
Martin Gottesfeld’s hands apparently weren’t as nimble with the jib and spinnaker of a sailboat as they were with his keyboard. The 31-year-old is suspected to be behind a high-profile hacking attack against a Massachusetts medical center and apparently had tried to flee. He and his wife were traveling in…
Just after midnight yesterday, 911 dispatchers in the Florida Keys received a barrage of odd calls: A backhoe, witnesses said, was wildly flinging boulders across the Seven Mile Bridge and into the water. Thus began America’s strangest police chase of the year. Over the next three hours, a small army…
O.J.-mania is once again gripping America this month thanks to “The People vs. OJ Simpson,” a new FX series dramatizing the sordid trial that gripped the nation in the mid-90s. But it was fifty years ago this year when Miami that found itself in the center of one of America’s…
Last night two children reported to security officers at the Flamingo condominium building in South Beach that their mother had been assaulted in her unit. When police showed up they found the 31-year-old woman dead. Police identified Samir Jemaaoui as the main suspect, and CBS Miami reports that the victim was his…
Major League Baseball player Delmon Young found himself behind bars and accused of battery this weekend after threatening to kill a valet at the Viceroy hotel in Brickell over the weekend. Young reportedly unleashed a tirade full of ethnic insults at the valet before leaving. Police eventually found him at his…
Anchelin Gonzalez was just 17 when she left the Bronx and moved to Palm Beach to give birth to her son back in 2005. She was “leading a fast and dangerous life” in New York, she says, but relocated to live with her uncle in a sunnier side of the…
Derek Medina was sentenced to life in prison for the grisly 2013 murder of his wife Jennifer Alonso. The case made headlines after Medina posted a picture of Alonso’s lifeless murder on Facebook with the caption, “I’m going to prison or death sentence for killing my wife.” Though Medina correctly predicted his…
Last week, a Miami woman named Claudia Castillo went nuclear on the Palmetto Expressway when she says a Miami-Dade cop went flying past her near 100 mph. Castillo followed the cop, got him to pulled over, then filmed an exchange that has since gone viral online, with many praising her…
Unknown assailants opened fire on a car waiting in line at a Burger King drive through this morning. Inside the car was Donesha S. Gantt, 17, her mother, and two others. Gantt and another woman were shot. In a state of panic, Gantt, who thought she might die, took out her…
On May 20, 2015, David G. Queen Jr., the son of community activist Tangela Sears, was gunned down in an apartment complex parking lot in Tallahassee. In the months that followed, Sears shared her pain with other parents whose children had been killed by gun-toting criminals. They’ve now formed an…
At first glance, the video looks like a million others on YouTube — a wary citizen films a vertical cell phone video from their front seat as a stern police officer leans in. But then it’s the driver who speaks up. The cop stands silent, looking mildly confused. “The reason…
In the wake mass protests in Cleveland, Ferguson and Baltimore, cops nationwide have scrambled for ways to better police themselves. Body cameras have quickly emerged as a consensus choice to add clarity to the often muddy waters that follow a fatal police shooting. Miami’s no different — the past year,…
This past November 15, Michael Gavins was shot in the back by a South Miami Police officer during a traffic stop. As New Times detailed earlier this month, Gavins was unarmed, and an independent witness and physical evidence back his claim that his hands were in the air when he…
The poker player got belligerent around 12:30 this morning, causing enough of a commotion that Magic City Casino staffers asked him to leave. When he wouldn’t, a City of Miami cop working security stepped in to force him to exit the gambling room. That’s when things got hairy. Police say…
Earlier this month, a high school soccer game at Florida Christian’s campus in southwest Dade County ended in chaos. The opposing team’s coach says he watched in horror as a swarm of Florida Christian fans and players surrounded a ref and began “pummeling” him. Both Miami-Dade police and the Florida…
Last Thursday the Marathon High School boys’ soccer team traveled down to Miami to play at Miami Christian. It was a close game, with a lot of penalties—the refs dished out maybe 10 yellow cards—but by the final minutes Marathon was up 2-1. Then the real action started. The Key…
“Mary” grew up in Ontario. She was a competitive swimmer and a violinist, and was always fascinated by cruise ships — whenever she passed a travel agency, she told New Times, she would run and pull out the cruise brochures, transfixed. Mary says that love was horribly tarnished, though, when…
The ten-minute clip wouldn’t be out of place on WorldStar Hip Hop — in short bursts of cell phone video, it captures drunken screaming matches and knock-down, bareknuckle brawls soundtracked with a thumping club beat. But the piece isn’t meant as street-fighting clickbait. The video was actually edited and uploaded…
Last year, Florida was one of the most enthusiastic states in the nation for handing out the death penalty — and it sentenced those prisoners to death with an unusual system. It’s one of just three states that doesn’t require a unanimous jury to deliver the ultimate punishment. Now, that…
For Miami cops, Saturday was one of those nights. By 8:15 p.m., detectives had already left one shooting in Overtown to rush to another in Liberty City, where they found a 15-year-old boy dead in an empty field. As they combed area for evidence, more gunshot rattled the night. Just…
