Exactly one year ago today, Ruben Sebastian was driving across the Rickenbacker Causeway with a trunk full of groceries in his Chevy HHR station wagon. Sebastian, who at that time was an armed security guard for Miami-Dade County, had been earning some extra cash by delivering groceries and was in…
Rayne Burse was walking her dog, Mojito, near a canal in her new neighborhood Sunday evening when an older woman first approached and shook a finger in her face. “You’re part of South Miami,” said the stranger, later identified by police as Maria Dorrbecker, who had come out of a…
Miami Beach Police issued a dire warning to residents last week: Stay off the beach when the sun goes down. The warning came after a string of high-profile robberies culminated in a Texas woman getting sexually assaulted by a trio of men on the beach after dark. They also robbed…
As part of an “aggressive hiring plan,” the Miami-Dade Police Department wants to beef up its stockpiles of weapons, armor, and ammo. And they’re asking county commissioners for millions in new body armor, “ballistic shields,” and night-vision rifles — as well as a controversial license-plate reading system. The request, which…
Miami, we talked about this yesterday. Firing your gun in the air to celebrate Fourth of July is a very bad idea. Falling celebratory bullets have seriously injured multiple people in recent years, including two kids in separate instances. But you didn’t listen. In fact, you even found a new…
With Election Day rapidly approaching, Desmond Meade’s calendar has been jam-packed with political rallies and fundraising galas. In the past few months, the Miami native has been a part of a handful of panel discussions about reforming the criminal justice system, appeared as a guest on MSNBC, and headed to…
Anaid Romero was chilling outside the Biltmore Hotel in 2012, watching fireworks light up the Coral Gables sky when she noticed a weird sensation. “I just felt something wet on me and I looked down and I had blood everywhere,” Romero told NBC6 at the time. Romero soon found the source: A…
Things you should never ask your co-workers: If they believe in a Righteous Christian God; if they want to Make America Great Again; if they “have a Brazilian wax.” The last one rings especially true if you happen to work as a cop. In a lawsuit filed last Friday, Miami-Dade…
The grainy security video shows Steven Rodgers, a 43-year-old Miami-Dade County Public Schools Police officer, inside his Miami Edison Senior High School office. His silver badge glints against the dark blue of his uniform as he grins into the camera. And his penis is in his hand as he pleasures…
The action in Carl Hiassen’s Miami crime novel debut Tourist Season begins when a body is found floating down a river in a suitcase. That was very much fiction, but the idea of body parts being found stuffed into weird things in weird places remains very much a chilling reality…
Two men burst into a suburban Delray Beach office park on a muggy weekday in August 2014, demanding to talk to the CEO. They were there to get answers. In a beige office lobby decorated with abstract IKEA-style art, their target crossed his arms and smiled nervously. Dressed in an…
A lot of weird things happen in Florida every week, and on Fridays we’re here to bring you the weirdest. Elderly Florida Man Shoots Up Woman’s Home Over Sex Refusal The Villages is Central Florida’s massive planned retirement community that sometimes gains national notice for its reputation of unbridled elderly…
From The Sting to Oceans 11 to The Inside Man, good heist tales are widely loved in America. Though Miami may not have any masterminding thieves quite as suave as George Clooney and Robert Redford, the Magic City has been home to its fair share of amazing and downright bizarre real-life…
One of Rafael Pedroza’s earliest acting credits was a burglar on the Colombian soap opera Me Amaras Bajo La Lluvia (or, in English, You Loved Me in The Rain). Now he’s a suspect in a real life robbery here in Miami-Dade. Sunny Isles Beach Police are on the hunt for…
Migdalia “Milly” Cowan and her husband, Alex Paez, were regulars on the national bodybuilding circuit, traveling cross country to flex while glistening in Speedos. But while they competed, prosecutors say, they left their horses — which they used as props in muscled photoshoots — to starve back on their South…
Davone Bess’s latest bizarre confrontation with police started as a simple, routine traffic stop and then quickly escalated to a standoff with a SWAT team. Bess, best known as a former player with the Miami Dolphins, is behind bars today in Maricopa County, Arizona and facing three felony charges after the…
Around 9:30 one night back in March, residents in a Palmetto Bay neighborhood called police about a man who was outside apparently smashing car windows and puncturing car tires with a pick-axe. Officers quickly arrived to investigate and soon traced the suspect, 25-year-old Ethan Rincon, to his home on Southwest…
The evidence that FIU professor David Ralston raped an unconscious woman seems strong. The attack was caught on surveillance video, they say, that he had set up in his Lee County home. So when Ralston got word that detectives were trying to persuade him to voluntarily surrender, Ralston fled. After more…
Tatiana F. Tascon had a good little scam going for a while. Out of a showroom set up in her pricey Coconut Grove home Tascon peddled fake designer handbags from the likes of Louis Vuitton and counterfeit Rolex watches. Through selling clients a fake version of the good life earned over $700,000…
For months, Marco Rubio has resisted increasingly desperate calls from his colleagues to throw his name back into the ring for the bruising race for his seat in the U.S. Senate. But Rubio hinted yesterday that he might just be softening that stance because the massacre in Orlando had pushed…
Outside of Orlando itself, few places have been as closely impacted by the massacre at Pulse Nightclub as Miami — and in particular the Magic City’s LGBT community. South Florida’s gay scene is closely linked to that in central Florida, and at least one of the victims who died Sunday…
In the horrible hours after 49 club-goers were massacred in Orlando early Sunday morning, everyone in Florida grasped for how to respond to the brutal tragedy. Family members texted and checked in safe on Facebook. Hundreds lined up to donate blood. And one Florida sheriff decided the moment…
