ODESSA, Fla. – The swimming pool in the backyard of Louis Minardi’s home near Tampa may be distinctive to Florida: The custom-built pool is shaped like a six-shooter revolver, in a state made famous – sometimes infamous – by guns, gun politics and gun culture. “Neighbors that have bought houses …
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Editor’s note: If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources. Kaleb Boateng, a walk-on player for the University of Florida football team until last year, died of a self-inflicted gunshot …
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ROSEWOOD, Fla. – Lizzie Robinson Jenkins’s living room walls are covered in neat rows and columns of early 1900s history. Tables are littered with artifacts from her aunt, including frayed handkerchiefs and a metal coin purse — family heirlooms almost lost to hate. The 84-year-old’s expression changed as she remembered …
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The Gainesville City Commission passed an amendment Tuesday that allows people convicted of sexual offenses involving children under age 16 to live closer to schools, day care centers and parks, reducing the prohibited radius from 2,500 feet to 1,000 feet. The amendment also establishes a cut-off date that was previously …
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Republican Keith Perry came out on top Tuesday night in the District 9 Senate race, garnering approximately 65% of the vote. After the Associated Press called the race, the outgoing District 8 senator thanked his team and his voters for supporting the campaign and, above all, single-member districting. “I can’t …
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The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s chapter for Alachua County announced at a press conference Tuesday morning that it will pursue legal action against an advertising campaign that quoted political leaders of the local Black community to garner support for single-member districts, a referendum on November’s ballot. …
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On a fateful September evening in 2005, Lawton Swan and Katherine Swan attended Universal Studios’s Halloween Horror Nights — and with high hopes. It was one of their first dates. Lawton also grew up a horror fanatic, infatuated with haunted houses, scary movies and existentialism. He knew it was going …
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Alachua County made the joint-effort of state attorney Brian Kramer and public defender Stacy Scott a historic reality: Florida’s Eighth Judicial Circuit will become Florida’s first judicial circuit to integrate equitable sentencing software as an official part of its case management system and plea-bargaining process. Roughly 95% of cases are settled in plea negotiations. Known as the Equity in Sentencing Analysis System (ESAS), this fairly new software provides legal practitioners with a searchable database of statewide sentencing data from the Florida Department of Corrections going back to 1998.
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The man was found in the middle of the night with a bloody face, bloody clothes and no pants, in the front yard of a house in Jacksonville that wasn’t his. A 2017 report from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) indicated that the 72-year-old man, whose name …
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WUFT News News and Public Media for North Central Florida from the University of Florida in Gainesville