The Miami-Dade school district police ordered a report (subsequently leaked to the Miami Herald) accusing officials at that school of covering up, for almost 3 months, the September alleged statutory rape of a student by another, with the alleged perp being the all-world football player Antwain Easterling, who led the school to the state 6A football championship in December. State law requires them to notify the police (the real police, not the school district police) when they suspect sexual abuse. The incident might still be buried except that the girl's mother forced it into the open.
[Miami Herald]
Doin' the Pastor Straddle Ronald Smart, 47, of the Union Missionary Baptist Church in Port Richey, is to be arraigned on Friday for the near-petty crime of misdemeanor battery, but according to the complaining witness (an adult male), this misdemeanor battery was pretty hot. It involved the alleged victim being extremely tired and falling asleep at the pastor's house and waking up to find his pants pulled down and Rev. Smart straddling him, kissing his chest. Sadly, the alleged victim now reports that the Straddle has led to his disintegration. "I've lost my wife. I've lost everything. I'm practically homeless right now. I'm living in a hotel." [St. Petersburg Times]
Floridians With Worse Sex Lives Than You In Lake Mary (Seminole County), Justin Kraus, 22, was arrested after allegedly offering (unsuccessfully) $50, then $100, for a middle school boy's shorts. Exasperated by rejection, he finally just pulled 'em down. And you might find the mugshot useful in evaluating his guilt. [WKMG-TV (Orlando)] And while all that was going on, Lake Mary police were also on the lookout for a guy who had so far grabbed two women's butts. [WKMG-TV (Orlando)]
More Things To Worry About Today Bicycle-vs.-train racing to a Broward railroad crossing, and, in what must have (very briefly) occurred to the 44-yr-old bicyclist as an upset, the train prevailed [WPLG-TV (Miami)] . . . . . A cop in Largo issued a stop-sign-running ticket to Robert Christman, 51, and then, a half-hour later at the same sign, to his son Brian, 19 [St. Petersburg Times] . . . . . Anticipated scalper prices for the worst seats in the house at Super Bowl XLI in Miami: $2.7k (and $2.5k to get into the Playboy party the night before) [Miami Herald] . . . . . Fort Pierce police not ready for prime time: They have a (rare) capital murder case about to go to trial, and in the last week have suddenly found, first, 4 videotapes and, then, 3 audio tapes of witness interviews that the defense lawyers didn't know about [Palm Beach Post] . . . . . Finally, after almost 30 yrs under federal court order, the school system in Ocala was declared by a federal judge to be one of the most fully integrated in the whole damn country [Ocala Star-Banner] . . . . . Lakeland's Shawn McDowell, 38, apparently needs to get on with his life and so has offered for sale his collection of 4,000 refrigerator magnets [The Ledger (Lakeland)].
This article appears in Jan 17-23, 2007.