Shortly after earning a medical degree from the University of Miami in 1958, Ybor City native Fernando “Ferdie” Pacheco set up a family practice in Overtown, Miami’s historic black neighborhood. Much like it is today, the area was mired in poverty.
When Monroe County Sheriff’s deputies arrived at a small bungalow on a sandy Key Largo side street in October 2015, they found the worse murder scene the Keys had seen in more than two decades: a young couple, Tara Rosado and Carlos Ortiz, brutally executed in their bedroom just a few feet from Rosado’s three young children.
Every time Miami Beach’s Animal Recovery Mission (ARM), the undercover animal-abuse investigative group led by former military contractor Richard Couto, releases a video, it gets that much harder to eat meat or drink milk from South Florida cows. This month has been a doozy for Couto. First, ARM last week released film of animal handlers at one Okeechobee farm kicking cows.
As New Times revealed in an investigation published Tuesday, former Calvary Chapel Fort Lauderdale Pastor Bob Coy — who once led the largest megachurch in Florida — was accused in 2015 of molesting a girl for more than a decade, beginning when she was 4 years old. Coy was never charged in the case and had already resigned from Calvary over an admitted string of extramarital affairs.
In March 2014, David Velasquez called police to report the theft of his work tools. But when Broward Sheriff’s deputies arrived, he says, the cops were more concerned about his immigration status than the crime. They ended up placing him under arrest, Velasquez says — and breaking his leg while taking him into custody.
A few months ago, a Coral Gables homeowner made national headlines when he put his $6.4 million mansion on the market and said he’d accept payment in Bitcoin. So when a seller approached luxury real-estate agent Eric Fernandez with a similar proposition, he was ready for the challenge.
Miami is known for getting slammed by hurricanes, which tend to blow down power lines. So after Irma knocked out electricity for roughly 90 percent of Florida Power & Light’s customers in September, many residents asked why most of FPL’s lines are still above ground. The company is now reportedly “considering” burying more of its lines, but one Miami-Dade County commissioner thinks there’s a faster route to harden Florida against storms. She wants the state to force FPL to put lines underground.
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio will probably never be president because he once drank water like a doofus on national television four years ago. The moment, which came during a State of the Union rebuttal, was dissected with Zapruder-film-like intensity, Poland Spring got in on the action, and Rubio cemented his status as a frightened, sweaty weirdo who lost his cool over eight ounces of spring water.
For decades, José Miguel Battle Sr. ran La Corporación, a ruthless organized-crime syndicate also known as the Cuban Mafia. It made more than a billion dollars on gambling rings and used arson, beatings, and assassins to deal with its enemies. His son, José Miguel Battle Jr., rose through the ranks to help run the criminal enterprise as the family became one of the richest in Miami.
In case you missed it, the U is back — and so are the haters. Many people love the Miami Hurricanes, but so many more hate them. Here are our best guesses as to why.
Prison inmates — especially those awaiting trial — cannot legally consent to sex with guards, supervisors, or anyone else who holds that much power over their lives in government custody. That should be common sense, and it’s why the federal government defines sex between prison guards and inmates as rape. For that same reason, a prison guard at the Federal Detention Center (FDC) in Miami was sentenced Tuesday to eight months’ imprisonment after pleading guilty to raping a woman under his care.
It turns out that repeatedly holding diet-Nazi presidential rallies in a state already known for housing millions of unhinged lunatics might not have been a great way to spend 2016. According to FBI data released yesterday, Florida cops reported 96 hate incidents last year. That’s up from 72 in 2015…
Recently, the Trump administration denied environmental protection to the Florida Keys mole skink, whose habitat is projected to disappear in the next 40 years due to sea-level rise. Now the Center for Biological Diversity is threatening a lawsuit to fight the administration’s blatant disregard for climate science and the species affected by it.
Instead of shouldering the cost of fixing its leaking cooling canals at Turkey Point Nuclear Generating Station in Homestead, FPL is asking state regulators for permission to pass that bill — a reported $200 million — onto consumers.
The call came from California. A woman told Coral Springs Police she had recently learned something terrible: A South Florida man had molested her daughter for years. It began when the girl was just 4 years old. An officer noted the information and called the victim, who was then a…
Perhaps don’t name your football team after a drunk ethnic stereotype hell-bent on violence. Notre Dame’s staggeringly drunk leprechaun mascot doesn’t seem to encourage great behavior. After the University of Miami Hurricanes laid a 41-8 beatdown on the Notre Dame Fighting Irish on Saturday, two drunk-looking Irish fans decided to…
At Florida International University, the fallout over a leaked group chat from the school’s College Republicans is still spreading. After New Times first reported Friday about the chats — which show the young GOP students joking about deporting classmates and making light of the attack by a white supremacist in Charlottesville — the school announced it was investigating the group.
Florida’s law enforcement community is staffed by far too many adult children. Just ask State Trooper Donna Jane Watts. In October 2011, Watts stopped a City of Miami cop traveling 120 mph on the highway and arrested him; in retaliation, 88 police officers used the confidential police driver database to stalk her.
College bros are terrible. Florida college bros are particularly terrible. And particularly terrible Florida bros have committed a really heinous list of offenses in the last 30 days — from getting caught joking about rape to sharing memes making fun of the victims of the Charlottesville Nazi attack to saying…
Rape and sexual violence are a near certainty for poor, migrant women working in Florida fields. Workplace rape is frighteningly common — a New Times investigation in 2015 chronicled a horrifying case of mass rape at one Florida farm. Other studies have suggested 80 percent of female farmworkers experience sexual harassment or violence during their careers handling food and produce.
Thursday morning, dozens of Florida International University students walked out of class in protest. They urged the government to protect young immigrants who might be kicked out of the United States by the Trump administration. While they were demonstrating, their classmates in the FIU College Republicans were cracking jokes about trying to get the students deported. The exchange happened in a private group chat provided to New Times.
On September 2, 1963, 18-year-old Stephen Hertz made a decision that changed his life forever when he signed as a third baseman with the Houston Colt 45s (now the World Series-winning Houston Astros). Fresh out of school at Miami Senior High, Hertz couldn’t help but feel starry-eyed as he walked onto the field for Opening Day against the Cincinnati Reds in the spring of ’64.
