Free Republic

GAINESVILLE, Fla. - A man in Florida is accused of stealing a large construction excavator and taking it for a drive, knocking down power poles before plowing through the front of a Walmart store in Gainesville, police said. Police said 47-year-old Jesse Charles Smith hot wired the excavator and stole it from a nearby storage area. He damaged other storage units, a Starbucks, and the Walmart on SW 42nd Street during the joyride, police said. Police estimated the total damage to Walmart near $2 million. Police said Smith was also armed with a machete. It's not known why Smith stole...

GAINESVILLE, Fla. (WCJB/Gray News) - Authorities in Florida say a woman has been arrested after she threatened to injure a man at a bus stop. According to the Alachua County Sheriff’s Office, 31-year-old Gabriela Mcleskey was taken into custody on Tuesday after she threatened to cut off a man’s penis and barricaded herself inside a residence. WCJB reports that deputies received a call regarding a woman at a bus stop holding a knife who was threatening to cut off a man’s genitalia before driving away. Deputies located the woman’s vehicle at a nearby Circle K and tried to perform a...

GAINESVILLE, Ga. - A Gainesville man's attempt to rob the employees of a local business became than he bargained after it turned into what police described "like a scene from Home Alone." The Gainesville police say that 30-year-old Luis Sajbocho-Ordonez had hid himself behind a business on the 400 block of Atlanta Highway in the early morning hours of Christmas Day. When an employee exited the store, police say Sajbocho-Ordonez pulled a gun on them and demanded cash, leading to a struggle. Investigators say Sajbocho-Ordonez became startled when another employee left the building and fired a shot, which didn't hit...

GAINESVILLE, Fla. (WCJB) - A college student is behind bars after two residents, who did not know him, found the man naked in their apartment in Gainesville. On Monday night, Gainesville Police Department officers arrested Alberto Araya, 19, on charges of burglary and multiple counts of property damage. Officers say around 6 p.m. Araya was recorded on security footage damaging the exit sign at The Standard Apartments on West University Ave. while wearing only green shorts. He then entered an apartment of people he doesn’t know. When the two residents returned home, they found Araya standing completely naked in their...

GAINESVILLE, Fla. (WFLA) — A Gainesville man is in jail after being accused of stealing from a Walmart store that he claimed he owned. According to Gainesville Police Department records obtained by WCJB, Steven Francis, 51, was caught stealing clothes from the Walmart located behind Butler Plaza in Gainesville. Upon arrival, officers said Francis told them he was the owner of the store after a “hostile takeover.” Francis said he had no remorse for taking the clothes because he already owned the store. According to WCJB, the items taken are estimated to be worth over $200. Francis is currently behind...

A Georgia man faces up to 20 years in prison after more than $3 billion in stolen Bitcoin was found stashed in a popcorn tin at his home in what authorities call the second largest seizure of cryptocurrency. James Zhong, 32, pleaded guilty on Friday to stealing the Bitcoin a decade ago from the illegal Silk Road marketplace, which the FBI shut down in 2013. The U.S. Department of Justice announced this week that authorities raided Zhong's Gainesville home in November 2021 where they found 50,676 Bitcoin with a value of $3.36 billion at the time.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Branford resident Richard Fredrick Torrey, III, 35, was arrested Sunday after allegedly stealing Lego sets from Walmart. At 3:59 p.m. Torrey entered Walmart with re-usable shopping bags going to the Lego section of Walmart in Butler Plaza, Gainesville, Florida. Torrey filled the shopping bags with 26 Lego sets with a value of $1,001 and walked past cash registers. A Walmart loss prevention employee called Gainesville Police to report Torrey exiting the store.

College students organized a protest in response to their university’s nomination of a sole finalist for president of the school. The University of Florida announced on October 6 that Senator Ben Sasse, R-Neb, was unanimously nominated to be the only contender to serve as the 13th president of the public institution.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. (WCJB) -A man from Gainesville is behind bars after threatening Walmart employees with a machete. Davon Maurice Jordan, 26, was arrested this weekend at the Walmart at Butler Plaza located on Southwest 42nd street. Jordan was allegedly yelling inside the store, prompting employees to ask him to leave. When he refused, employees called the authorities and attempted to escort him outside the door. Jordan then grabbed a machete from a shopping cart and threatened the employees with the weapon.

DeSantis had threatened ‘millions of dollars’ in fines over Gainesville’s vaccine mandate, which a Florida judge blocked last month. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced on Friday that the city of Gainesville has withdrawn a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for workers after pressure from his administration and a court ruling against the policy last month. “We are not going to allow our first responders and government employees, many of whom have been on the front lines for over a year and a half, to be cast aside by local politicians’ mandates,” DeSantis said in a press release. “This reversal by the City...

Students from the University of Florida say education about the 9/11 attacks 'should avoid placing blame' and called for a stop to perpetuating ideas of 'American exceptionalism' in the latest example of woke ideas run amok on college campuses. Ahead of the 20th anniversary, student reporter Ophelie Jacobson surveyed students at the Gainesville campus to ask their opinions about education surrounding the terrorist attacks on September 1, 2001. She noted that students today were too young- or not alive -during the 9/11 attacks to have their own memories of the tragic events. Most students said that they did not remember...

Gainesville city officials warned Friday that a northwest area sinkhole continues to grow and onlookers who try to get an up-close peek are taking a risk. City officials advised looky loos to steer clear, and said they were installing a six-foot chain link fence around the sinkhole Friday to keep people off the property.

GoogleÂ’s legal investigations support team, writing to let him know that local police had demanded information related to his Google account. The company said it would release the data unless he went to court and tried to block it. He had just seven days. He had an Android phone, which was linked to his Google account, and, like millions of other Americans, he used an assortment of Google products, including Gmail and YouTube. Now police seemingly wanted access to all of it. In the notice from Google was a case number. McCoy searched for it on the Gainesville Police DepartmentÂ’s...

Police are investigating several jars of human remains found Monday underneath a Florida woman’s house. The Gainesville Police Department said Mary Baughman had a contractor out to give her a quote on work she wanted to be done on her house, but when he went to look for damage underneath the house, he found gallon-sized plastic jars of human tongues, according to the Tampa Bay Times. The labels on the jars were dated back to the late 1960s. Alarmed by what he saw, the contractor immediately called the police, according to chief inspector Jorge Campos. Although the jars had been...

A hard-boiled egg recall has expanded to products sold at Walmart and Trader Joe's following a deadly listeria outbreak. Almark Foods broadened the recall to include all hard-boiled egg products manufactured at its facility in Gainesville, Georgia, due to potential listeria contamination. The listeria outbreak has been linked to seven cases, including one death and four hospitalizations, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported. The outbreak is contained to five states, but the recalled products were shipped nationwide. The expanded recall includes popular brands and organic fare, like Egglands Best, Pete & Gerry's and Vital Farms. Trader Joe's egg...

It doesn’t get much more Northern Virginia than this. Traffic woes and construction delays are daily gripes on the local Facebook group, “Western Prince William Chatter.” Then Steve came along -- and brought joy to the group's 20,000-plus members. "It seems he is the light at the end of the tunnel when you're STUCK in that horrible traffic! Thanks for entertaining us Steve and for those calling him Bob, just no," one Facebooker wrote. Before WPWC members gave him a name, Steve was simply known as a rubber tire crane. He came to the Manassas area to lift 10 concrete...

University of Florida’s Young Americans for Freedom chapter settled in court earlier this week, after suing their university for speech censorship and funding bias. The student group alleges the university imposed criteria that disproportionately impacted those looking to bring conservative speakers to campus.The crux of the suit revolved around money collected from mandatory student fees, which are dispersed to student groups via the student government. In its 45-page legal complaint, YAF said the student government failed to distribute funds to student organizations in a fair, viewpoint-neutral manner. Now with the suit settled, UF will change its policy in addition to paying $66,000 in...

The latest attack involved a former member of the University of Florida football team in Gainesville, Florida. Daniel Weldon, 22, was celebrating the Fourth of July with his friend when he was accosted and assaulted by a rowdy group of seven men and women. Weldon, who is chairman of the Florida Federation of College Republicans, tells me he was decked out in patriotic garb – an American flag shirt, a Trump pin and a MAGA hat. “My girlfriend had warned me earlier that night that someone would attack me for wearing my MAGA hat to a college bar,” he said....

A Florida mom and pediatrician warned parents to better monitor their children’s internet activity after she found a disturbing clip that appeared to encourage children to harm themselves, inserted into gaming videos on YouTube and YouTube Kids. Dr. Free Hess, from Gainesville, Florida, found the 9-second-long suicide instructions sandwiched between clips of the Nintendo game Splatoon last week and shared it online to caution other parents. "Remember kids, sideways for attention, longways for results," a man said while demonstrating the cutting motion on his arm. "End it." The man, identified by CBS News as YouTuber Filthy Frank, has over 6.2...

WASHINGTON — About two years ago, during the last big debate over Interstate 66 rush-hour tolls for solo drivers, there was a lot of talk about $17 round-trip tolls. Virginia’s transportation secretary said this week that the tolls drivers have seen inside the Beltway so far remain in line with those projections. New data the Virginia Department of Transportation provided Thursday from the first day of tolls on Monday morning show the average morning toll for drivers who paid with an E-ZPass, or who will get automated violation notices in the mail, was $10.70, while the average afternoon toll paid...