Free Republic

An alligator bit a man’s face while he was swimming in a lake near Tampa. It happened last Thursday at Lake Thonotosassa which is in Hillsborough County. Fire rescue took the 34-year-old man to the hospital after the alligator bit his face, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission which dispatched a contracted trapper to the lake and is continuing to investigate the incident.

TAMPA, Fla.— Today, Governor Ron DeSantis suspended State Attorney Andrew Warren of the 13th Judicial Circuit due to neglect of duty. The Governor has the authority to suspend a state officer under Article IV, Section 7 of the Constitution of the State of Florida. The Governor has appointed Susan Lopez to serve as State Attorney for the period of suspension. She has most recently been serving as a Judge on the Hillsborough County Court. To view the order suspending Andrew Warren and appointing Susan Lopez, click here. “State Attorneys have a duty to prosecute crimes as defined in Florida law,...

What a bad year to be a Florida manatee. For the first time on record, more than 1,000 of the sea mammals have died in a calendar year — and it’s not even December yet. That could amount to 1 in every 7 of the state’s manatees gone in less than 11 months. Many of them starved, thanks to a die-off of seagrass, a problem worsened by human-made pollution. In the short run, Florida owes it to this iconic mammal to find ways to mitigate the damage. It’s also time to put the manatees back on the endangered species list,...

Long before she was tall enough to sit behind a steering wheel, Paula Nelson-Blattner was experiencing the best and the worst of the Howard Frankland Bridge. “As a kid, I was always nervously asking my parents, ‘Did you check your gas?’” said Nelson-Blattner, 52, who got the creeps crossing the concrete span, perched as it is atop golf-tee shaped pillars as far as 58 feet above the waters of Old Tampa Bay. “Of course, once you’re close enough to read the warnings, not a gas station is in sight and it’s far too late to turn back.” The “check your...

TAMPA — Transportation planners are preparing to use new technology to try to solve an old problem — traffic crashes and congestion on Interstate 4 between Tampa and Orlando. The state Department of Transportation is designing a corridor management system that will relay real time information directly to motorists about congestion, accidents, work zones, weather warnings and even end-of-the-traffic-back-up locations on I-4 and alternate routes. The idea behind so-called connected vehicle technology is to improve traffic flow on the interstate and east-west alternatives without adding new lanes or acquiring new right of way. On Wednesday, Hillsborough’s Metropolitan Planning Organization —...

FLORIDA — Gov. Ron DeSantis announced last week that while vaccines for COVID-19 are coming soon, he won’t require anyone to get vaccinated if they don’t want to. But a GOP state lawmaker said that state law, as currently written, could allow him or any other governor to mandate vaccinations, and he will file legislation in the coming days to repeal that law. “Right now in Florida, under the public health emergency statute chapter 381, they can literally take you, test you, quarantine you, but also force you to take a vaccine. They can restrain you and force you to...

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) - A Florida man is charged with providing material support to the Islamic State extremist group, including attempting to buy multiple weapons and scouting potential targets for an attack in the Tampa Bay area, federal prosecutors said Wednesday. A criminal complaint charges Muhammed Momtaz Al-Azhari, a 23-year-old U.S. citizen, with attempting to provide material support or resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization. The charge carries a potential 20-year prison term. **SNIP** According to the affidavit, Al-Azhari scouted a number of targets in the Tampa Bay region, including beaches, parks and even the Tampa FBI field...

With Hepatitis A cases skyrocketing across Florida, reported cases among food workers are also on a steep rise. That’s creating a real public health issue, as ingesting the virus through food or water is the easiest way to contract it. Yet the DOH chooses not to notify the public of some food worker cases, according to a spokesperson, as the agency weighs the risk to patrons against the risk of a public health scare. In the case of this grocery store employee last week, who was hospitalized after symptoms worsened over the course of several days, the DOH determined there...

Bronough Street, we have a problem. That problem for Democrats is that Republicans have figured out early voting. The one “ace up the sleeve” for Democrats in Florida has been offset by an aggressive early voting campaign by Republicans. In fact, 7,152 more Republicans have voted early compared to Democrats. When Democrats make small gains in Broward, Miami-Dade, Hillsborough and, yes, Duval Counties, Republicans are making significantly larger early vote gains in Sarasota, Okaloosa, Santa Rosa, and almost every other Republican-leaning county in the state. Remember when I said at the beginning of the election that the Florida Panhandle was...

TAMPA — Hillsborough County leaders voted Tuesday to move forward with a plan to add 90 miles of toll lanes to Tampa Bay's interstates despite continued opposition from the people whose neighborhoods would be impacted the most by the project. The Hillsborough County Metropolitan Planning Organization — a 16-person board which approves transportation projects — listened to more than 3½- hours of public comment on its Transportation Improvement Program, which lists the county's priorities for the next five years. The TIP includes dozens of projects, from road maintenance to bike paths. But the evening's debate centered around only one project:...

A couple of weeks ago we got the first hint of what was going on in these locales from Axiom Strategies. Even as his national numbers were sinking, Trump was holding on pretty well in those counties. Now they’ve gone even deeper into this particular geographic analysis, and as Politico Reports, Hillary Clinton has a fight on her hands that she’s currently losing. Axiom identified seven counties in seven battleground states that have proved to be bellwethers in the past four elections. Trump, so far, has an edge in four of them, Hillary Clinton has an edge in two, and...

Hillsborough is not over! In the longest running inquest in British legal history and possibly the biggest policing cover up ever, a Coroner’s Jury found retired Police Superintendent David Duckenfield and other senior commanders responsible for the unlawful killing of 96 soccer fans. The unlawful killing finding was the key component of the 14 counts and now invites criminal manslaughter charges to be filed. That decision will be taken by Assistant Police Commissioner John Stoddart, appointed directly by Home Secretary Theresa May in 2012 to run Operation Resolve. It is the official investigation that would then refer evidence to the...

The 96 Liverpool soccer fans who died in the Hillsborough Stadium disaster were "unlawfully killed" because of errors by the police, a jury concluded Tuesday. Relatives of the victims of the 1989 disaster, some wearing Liverpool scarves, were in tears outside a specially-built courtroom after new inquests into Britain's worst sporting disaster.

TAMPA - The concept of an annual gun buyback program for Hillsborough County got an icy reception from county commissioners, several of whom questioned whether such a plan would make a difference in gun violence. Commissioner Lesley Miller, whose son was a shooting victim, said he doubts whether anyone with criminal intent would ever show up at a gun buyback. "The people that want to have the handguns and do the violent crimes in Hillsborough County and across this country are not going to turn them in," Miller said. The idea came from Commissioner Kevin Beckner, who agreed that a...

TAMPA -- Last month, the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office received an anonymous call about three shots fired and a dog possibly buried in the backyard of a Clair-Mel City vacant home. When investigators arrived at the home, 3221 Deerfield Dr., Tampa, they found a 2-year-old female pit bull mix buried up to its nose. A Hillsborough County Animal Services animal control officer used her hands to dig the dog out. The dog had been shot twice and was bleeding profusely, said Pam Perry, an Animal Services investigations manager. "For her to even be alive when the officer got there is...

Welcome to the molten core of the political universe, the hottest battleground in the biggest battleground state. Since 1960, Hillsborough County has called every single presidential election except for one—and there’s no reason to think that voters here won’t do it again. Look around this county of 1.2 million and you’ll find a mash-up of past and future: a solidly Democratic city bracketed by Republican-leaning suburbs; strawberry fields, ranch-style homes, and gentrified urban neighborhoods; Puerto Ricans, Cuban-Americans, African-Americans, Midwestern retirees, college kids, active military, and young families; the brick and wrought iron of historic Ybor City, and the stucco and...

Calling all North Carolina FReepers! Please come to the conservative rally being held in Hillsborough tomorrow! We will be having a number of local and regional conservative candidates speaking, and will be generating a lot of enthusiasm for conservatism in our area! Everyone welcome to join it! If you'd like to RSVP or find other information, please visit the event page on Facebook here Location: Historical Courthouse in Hillsborough, NC 104 E. King St. There is parking located a few blocks down the street in a parking deck behind Weaver St. Market. After 5 PM, the deck should be free...

We have a GREAT time at the rally in Hillsborough this evening! Good sized crowd, with a good mix of people - young and old, college students, senior citizens, black, white, Hispanic, from all over the county. We are counting the crowd at around 200, since the event organiser's sister, who is also his campaign manager, had put together these little flags with a ribbon on them - she brought 250, and had around 50 left after handing them out to the crowd. The crowd seemed pretty enthusiastic, and each of the speakers got a good response. ~200 people is...

Hillsborough County Deputy Kevin Stabins has been suspended for five days after an internal affairs investigation found he used excessive force on a woman he pulled over.The woman, Melissa Langston, had been pulled over for going 63 in a 35 mile an hour zone on Nov. 1. Langston was on the way to make sure her father, who was driving himself to University Community Hospital after suffering a heart attack, got there safely.When Stabins went back to his car to run her plates and write a ticket, the woman waited three minutes, but then took off and drove a short...

This image seemed quite timely in the wake of Charley. Despite the magnitude of the disaster and the hardship currently being endured by Florida citizens that are affected, it could have been much, much worse if Charley had gone up through Tampa Bay the way that it went up through Charlotte Harbor. The largest city near Charlotte Harbor, Ft. Myers, isn't on Charlotte Harbor, whereas St. Petersburg and Tampa both sit right on the bay shore. I've got some local knowledge of the area, by virtue of a friend that has a house on the Intercoastal Waterway on the western...