ST. LUCIE COUNTY, Fla. (ClickOrlando) – An 85-year-old woman was attacked and killed Monday by a gator in a Florida retirement community.
St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office deputies & Florida Fish & Wildlife officials responded to the call about an alligator bite incident.
Neighbors said the woman, Gloria Serge, was walking her dog when she was dragged into the water by an alligator at the Spanish Lakes Fairways 55 & older community.
One resident, 77-year-old Carol, said it was just past 12 p.m. when it happened.
“I heard kind of like a commotion,” she said. “I looked out & I saw the dog & I saw…my neighbor.”
Carol first called 911 & ran, trying & hoping she could help.
“I just remember her coming up & pushing her hair out of her face & I’m saying, ‘Swim toward the paddle boat’ & she said, ‘I can’t, the gator has me.’
“I got my longest Shepherd’s hook to try to hook her or hit him or do something,” Carol continued. “Hit him on the nose or something. I couldn’t do anything, which haunts me right now.”
The victim was recovered & a contracted nuisance alligator trapper captured the 10-foot-long alligator involved in the incident.
Authorities said the victim’s dog survived & is in good condition. FWC said the woman was pulled into the water by the gator after it tried taking her dog.
Posted by ChasinDatPaper on February 16, 2023 at 11:30pm
Inglewood, California spitter 2Eleven comes through with a new album titled "The Price Jus Went Up." Features include Southside Yoko, Problem, G. Perico, Flee Lord, T.F, Quincey White.
1. Stream Money (Prod. Marvel Mane) 2. Winner Talk Ft. Problem (Prod. Don Will On It) 3. 100 Spokes Ft. G Perico (Prod. Cardo Got Wings x Johnny Juliano) 4. That's My Life (Prod. Cypress Moreno) 5. 210 Ft. Southside Yoko (Prod. Cypress Moreno) 6. Best Western (Prod. Cypress Moreno) 7. Burn Bridges Ft. Flee Lord x Quincey White x T.F (Prod. Cardo Got Wings x Johnny Juliano) 8. No Respect (Prod. Cypress Moreno)
Posted by ChasinDatPaper on December 12, 2022 at 10:00am
The nonbinary Biden administration official facing up to 5 years in prison for allegedly stealing luggage in Minnesota now faces up to 10 years in prison for stealing another bag in Nevada.
Samuel Brinton — who has served as the Energy Department's deputy assistant secretary for spent fuel & waste disposition since June allegedly stole a suitcase with a total estimate worth of $3,670 on July 6 at Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas. The bag contained jewelry valued at $1,700, clothing worth $850 & makeup valued at $500.
Police closed the investigation, though, after they were unable to identify the person who took the suitcase.
On Nov. 29, investigators reopened the case after media reports highlighting Brinton's alleged theft in a Minnesota airport surfaced. Upon viewing the news articles, the officer who had closed the case months earlier "immediately recognized" Brinton "as the suspect pertaining to this case."
"Brinton demonstrated several signs of abnormal behavior while taking the victim's luggage which are cues suspects typically give off when committing luggage theft," the LVMPD detective wrote in a report. "Specifically, Brinton pulled the victim's luggage from the carousel & examined the tag. Then placing it back on the carousel, looking in all directions for anyone who might be watching," it continued. "Pulling it back off the carousel before walking away with it quickly."
In Nevada, grand larceny of items worth more than $3,500 is considered a category B felony & is punishable by up to 10 years in prison & a fine of up to $10,000.
Brinton is scheduled to appear at a court hearing in Minnesota state court later this month to face similar charges from a September incident at the Minneapolis St. Paul Airport.
"Sam Brinton is on leave from DOE," a DOE spokesperson said.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A California man who smuggled more than 1,700 wild animals into the United States, including 60 reptiles hidden in his clothing, pleaded guilty Wednesday to federal charges.
Jose Manuel Perez, 30, of Oxnard, entered pleas to 2 counts of smuggling & a charge of wildlife trafficking.
Prosecutors said that from 2016 to this February, Perez & his accomplices used social media to arrange to smuggle animals from Mexico & Hong Kong. Most were reptiles & included Yucatan box turtles, Mexican box turtles, baby crocodiles & Mexican beaded lizards.
It is illegal to import the animals without permits under an international treaty on the trade of endangered species.
Perez paid accomplices a crossing fee to drive animals from Mexico to El Paso, Texas, where he had them shipped to his family’s Ventura County home & resold them to customers throughout the U.S.
He also made some 3 dozen trips to Mexico himself to pick up animals & on Feb. 25 he was arrested while trying to enter the U.S. with 60 reptiles hidden in bags of his clothing. 3 of the reptiles died.
The smuggled reptiles were worth about $739,000.
Perez fled to Tijuana in June while out on bond but was quickly captured & returned to the U.S. He could face up to 20 years in federal prison for each smuggling count when he’s sentenced on Dec. 1.
Port-au-Prince, Haiti (CNN) A tropical storm system is threatening to unleash flash flooding and mudslides on the area of Haiti where a 7.2-magnitude earthquake killed almost 1,300 people on Saturday.
Tropical Depression Grace was approaching the southern coast of Hispaniola, the island comprising Haiti and the Dominican Republic, early Monday bringing with it sustained winds of 35 mph, and higher gusts, CNN meteorologist Haley Brink said.
Tropical storm conditions are possible in the Dominican Republic and Haiti later today, Brink said, adding that several inches of rain are forecast -- with up to 15 inches possible in some isolated areas -- through Tuesday.
"I am worried about the upcoming storm as it can complicate the situation for us," Jerry Chandler, head of Haiti's civil protection agency, said on Sunday.
The agency reported at least 1,297 people dead and more than 5,700 injured on Sunday. Those numbers are expected to rise as search and rescue efforts continue.
The quake destroyed 13,694 homes and damaged another 13,785, officials from the agency said.
The destruction has also pushed hospitals to the brink and blocked roads, making it difficult for vital supplies to reach the affected areas.
"We really need help, yesterday I was helping at the hospital and things were out of control," a volunteer named Marcelin Lorejoie told CNN on Sunday.
"Not enough doctors, not enough medicines and we have people with serious injuries. We need urgent help before things (get) more complicated."
Authorities are going from house to house in search of survivors -- efforts which demand a tremendous amount of resources.
At the site of one collapsed hotel, a CNN team saw just one excavator, which was not working at the time. There was no police or security presence nearby, as people carried air conditioning units away from the wrecked building.
The earthquake struck at 8:30 a.m. local time on Saturday, at a depth of about 10 kilometers (6.2 miles); its epicenter was about 7.5 miles northeast of Saint-Louis-du-Sud in the southwest part of the country.
That location is about 60 miles west of the epicenter of the disastrous 7.0-magnitude quake that killed an estimated 220,000 to 300,000 people in 2010.
Trump campaign rallies have become major super spreader events, resulting in tens of thousands of COVID cases and hundreds of deaths ... this according to Stanford Univ.
Stanford scientists conducted a study of 18 Trump rallies all over the country. The conclusion ... 30,000 confirmed coronavirus cases that resulted in more than 700 deaths.
The study offers a rough estimate because this type of tracking is imprecise, but the authors estimated by looking at the incremental COVID increases in the areas where the rallies were held.
The deaths are not necessarily limited to people who attended the rallies ... people who became COVID-positive could have spread the disease to friends and family who may have contracted coronavirus and then passed away from it.
As you know, Trump's been crowing that he's immune from COVID, at times even offering to kiss folks in the crowd. He infamously said, "I'll walk in there, I'll kiss everyone in that audience. I'll kiss the guys and the beautiful women ... I'll just give ya a big fat kiss."
Trump's campaign honchos reportedly told the staff at his Tulsa rally to 86 the social distancing signs before people piled in, many if not most not wearing masks.
The virus is surging all over the country. On Friday, a new, ominous record was set ... 99,321 new COVID cases in a single day.
Posted by ChasinDatPaper on September 24, 2015 at 2:55pm
Video After The Jump
(Reuters) At least 717 pilgrims from around the world were killed on Thursday in a crush outside the Muslim holy city of Mecca, Saudi authorities said, in the worst disaster to strike the annual haj pilgrimage for 25 years.
At least 863 others were injured. Saudi King Salman said he had ordered a review of haj plans after the disaster, in which two large groups of pilgrims arrived together at a crossroads in Mina, a few kilometers east of Mecca, on their way to performing the "stoning of the devil" ritual at Jamarat.
Thursday's disaster was the worst to occur at the pilgrimage since July 1990, when 1,426 pilgrims suffocated in a tunnel near Mecca. Both incidents occurred on Eid al-Adha (Feast of the Sacrifice), Islam's most important feast and the day of the stoning ritual.
Photographs published on the Twitter feed of Saudi civil defense on Thursday showed pilgrims lying on stretchers while emergency workers in high-visibility jackets lifted them into an ambulance.
لا تزال عمليات الفرز مستمرة، وارتفع عدد الإصابات إلى 400 إصابة و 150 حالة وفاة. pic.twitter.com/HjZ2QuiYst
Other images showed bodies of men in white haj garments piled on top of each other. Some corpses bore visible injuries.
Unverified video posted on Twitter showed pilgrims and rescue workers trying to revive some victims.
The haj, the world's largest annual gathering of people, has been the scene of numerous deadly stampedes, fires and riots in the past, but their frequency has been greatly reduced in recent years as the government spent billions of dollars upgrading and expanding haj infrastructure and crowd control technology.
Safety during haj is a politically sensitive issue for the kingdom's ruling Al Saud dynasty, which presents itself internationally as the guardian of orthodox Islam and custodian of its holiest places in Mecca and Medina.
BLAME
Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said the Saudi government should accept responsibility for the crush, in which more than 100 Iranian nationals were reported to have died.
"The Saudi government should accept the responsibility of this sorrowful incident ... Mismanagement and improper actions have caused this catastrophe," Khamenei said in a statement published on his website.
King Salman offered deep condolences.
"We have instructed concerned authorities to review the operations plan ... (and) to raise the level of organization and management to ensure that the guests of God perform their rituals in comfort and ease," the monarch said.
The Interior Ministry spokesman, Mansour Turki said the investigation would look into what caused an unusual mass of pilgrims to congregate at the location of the disaster. "The reason for that is not known yet," he told a news conference in Mina.
U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and the White House offered condolences.
"The United States expresses its deepest condolences to the families of the hundreds of haj pilgrims killed and hundreds more injured in the heartbreaking stampede in Mina, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia," White House spokesman Ned Price said.
Iran's Tasnim and Fars news agencies reported that 125 Iranians were among the dead. Fars reported that Tehran summoned the Saudi charge d'affaires to lodge an official complaint over the disaster.
South African Acting President Cyril Ramaphosa extended condolences to families of the victims and said his government was awaiting information about his country's pilgrims.
JAMARAT
Street 204, where the crush occurred, is one of two main arteries leading through the camp at Mina to Jamarat, the site where pilgrims ritually stone the devil by hurling pebbles at three large pillars. In 2006, at least 346 pilgrims died in a stampede at Jamarat.
"Work is under way to separate large groups of people and direct pilgrims to alternative routes," the Saudi Civil Defence said on its Twitter account.
It said more than 220 ambulances and 4,000 rescue workers had been sent in to help the injured. Some of the wounded were evacuated by helicopters.
An Arab pilgrim who did not want to give his name said he had hoped to perform the stoning ritual later on Thursday afternoon but was now too frightened to risk doing so.
"I am very tired already and after this I can't go. I will wait for the night and if it not resolved, I will see if maybe somebody else can do it on my behalf," he said.
Efforts to improve safety at Jamarat have included enlarging the three pillars and constructing a three-decker bridge around them to increase the area and number of entry and exit points for pilgrims to perform the ritual.
More than 100,000 police and thousands of video cameras are also deployed to allow groups to be dispersed before they reach dangerous levels of density.
"Please pilgrims do not push one another. Please leave from the exit and don't come back by the same route," an officer kept repeating through a loudspeaker at Jamarat.
Two weeks ago 110 people died in Mecca's Grand Mosque when a crane working on an expansion project collapsed during a storm and toppled off the roof into the main courtyard, crushing pilgrims underneath.
TIANJIN, China (AP) — Huge, fiery blasts at a warehouse for hazardous chemicals killed at least 50 people and turned nearby buildings into skeletal shells in the Chinese port of Tianjin, raising questions Thursday about whether the materials had been properly stored.
Hundreds of people were injured in the explosions shortly before midnight Wednesday, which sent out massive fireballs that turned the night sky into day and shattered windows several kilometers (miles) away. Twelve of the dead were from among the more than 1,000 firefighters sent to the mostly industrial zone to fight the ensuing blaze.
"I thought it was an earthquake, so I rushed downstairs without my shoes on," said Tianjin resident Zhang Siyu, whose home is several kilometers (miles) from the blast site. "Only once I was outside did I realize it was an explosion. There was the huge fireball in the sky with thick clouds. Everybody could see it."
Zhang said she could see wounded people weeping. She said she did not see anyone who had been killed, but "I could feel death."
The municipal government in Tianjin, a key port and petrochemical processing hub about 120 kilometers (75 miles) east of Beijing, said 701 people were injured, including 71 in serious condition. It gave no figure for the missing.
There was no indication of what caused the blasts, and no immediate sign of any toxic cloud in the air as firefighters brought the fire largely under control by morning. However, the Tianjin government suspended further firefighting to allow a team of chemical experts to survey hazardous materials at the site, assess dangers to the environment and decide how best to proceed.
State media said senior management of the company had been detained, and that President Xi Jinping demanded severe punishment for anyone found responsible for the explosions.
"It was like what we were told a nuclear bomb would be like," said truck driver Zhao Zhencheng, who spent the night in the cab of his truck after the blasts. "I've never even thought I'd see such a thing. It was terrifying, but also beautiful."
In a sign of sensitivity over the hazardous materials stored at the warehouse, state broadcaster CCTV went into a live broadcast of a news conference in Tianjin when the head of the municipality's Environmental Protection Bureau chief, Wen Wurui, was speaking. He said there had been no apparent impact on air monitoring stations, but that water samples were still being examined.
However, when a reporter asked him whether the chemicals at the warehouse had been stored far enough away from residences in the area and Wen seemed at a loss for a response, the broadcaster suddenly cut away from the news conference, only to return to it again later.
Authorities said the blasts started at shipping containers at the warehouse owned by Ruihai Logistics, a company that says it stores hazardous materials including flammable petrochemicals, sodium cyanide and toluene diisocyanate.
The initial blast apparently triggered an even bigger one. The National Earthquake Bureau said the first blast was the equivalent of 3 tons of TNT, and the second 21 tons. The enormous fireballs from the blasts rolled through a nearby parking lot, turning a fleet of 1,000 new cars into scorched metal husks.
As is customary during disasters, Chinese authorities tried to keep a tight control over information. Police kept journalists and bystanders away with a cordon about 1 or 2 kilometers (about a mile) from the site. On China's popular microblogging platform of Weibo, some users complained that their posts about the blasts were deleted, and the number of searchable posts on the disaster fluctuated, in a sign that authorities were manipulating or placing limits on the number of posts.
The website of the logistics company became inaccessible Thursday.
The Tianjin government said that because of the blasts it had suspended online access to public corporate records. These records might be used to trace the ownership of Ruihai. It was not clear whether the blackout was due to technical damage related to the explosion. No one answered the phone at the Tianjin Market and Quality Supervision Administration or the Tianjin Administration for Industry and Commerce on Thursday.
Ruihai Logistics said on its website — before it was shut down — that it was established in 2011 and is an approved company for handling hazardous materials. It said it handles 1 million tons of cargo annually.
Photos taken by bystanders and circulating on microblogs show a gigantic fireball high in the sky with a mushroom cloud. Other photos on state media outlets showed a sea of fire that painted the night sky bright orange, with tall plumes of smoke.
About 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) from the explosion site is the luxury Fifth Avenue apartment complex on a road strewn with broken glass and pieces of charred metal thrown from the explosion. Like surrounding buildings, the Mediterranean-style complex had all its windows blown out, and some of its surfaces were scorched.
"It's lucky no one had moved in," said a worker on the site, Liu Junwei, 29. "But for us it's a total loss. Two years of hard work down the drain."
"It had been all quiet, then the sky just lit up brighter than day and it looked like a fireworks show," said another worker on the site who gave just his surname, Li.
Tianjin, with a population of about 15 million, is being promoted by the Chinese government as a center for finance and high-tech industry. The Tianjin Economic Development Area has attracted foreign investors including Motorola, Toyota, Samsung and Novozymes.
___
Associated Press writers Ian Mader, Didi Tang and Joe McDonald in Beijing and Erika Kinetz in Shanghai contributed to this report.
2Elevenis back with his lyrical ski mask and gloves preparing to release a new EP entitledThe Robb Report. He calls on producerLexi Banksfor the lead single off of the project,"Promise."
Despite leaking several days early 'Tha Carter IV' is doing big early numbers for retailers.
Billboard is reporting that Lil Wayne's latest album could move between 700,000-850,000 by the end of it's 1st week. Those numbers would make 'C4' second to only Lady Gaga's 'Born This Way' for debut week numbers in 2011.
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