St. Johns County demolished an abandoned home this month that had been used as several times as a lab to cook methamphetamine. Contamination levels were more than 1,800 times higher than levels deemed to be dangerous and this is the second contaminated home St. Johns County has demolished this year,…
A former director with the Clay County Clerk of Courts is now facing charges, accused of stealing county equipment and selling it a local pawns shop. Michael Hamilton was arrested this month on three felony charges, shortly after he was fired for suspicion of misconduct, according to a report in…
A man who was working as a correction officer for the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office was arrested this month, accused of stealing identities of inmates and filing false tax returns under their names. Harold Walbey has pleaded not guilty to a variety of tax and identity theft charges in federal court…
Popular television meteorologist Tim Deegan resolved his Jacksonville DUI case this month, pleading no contest to the charge and agreeing to a year of probation and a six-month driver’s license suspension. Deegan was arrested in November after police pulled him over for running a four-way stop in Jacksonville Beach and…
A Jacksonville mail carrier could face decades behind bars, accused of lying to residents on his mail route and talking them into giving him more than $33,000 over the last four years. Gregory Niebel allegedly repeatedly asked for money from residents for his girlfriend’s medications and told the people he’d…
A man who came back to a Clay County gas station to pay off a $3 debt ended up handing himself to police for an arrest on an armed robbery charge. A gas station clerk was telling a police officer about her “good deed” by loaning a man in an…
A Clay County legislator has again filed a bill to bring the state’s sentencing of juveniles in line with two Supreme Court rulings that have altered that landscape in recent years. One 2010 ruling eliminated life sentences for juveniles in cases other than murder and a second two years later…
The Florida policy of publicizing the crimes of sex offenders even more than convicted murders took another step this year by adding the ability for people to search sex offenders enrolled in state colleges and universities. This is one more impediment from encouraging convicted sex offenders to move past their…
A student at St. Augustine High School was arrested last month for allegedly bringing a gun into school and now faces criminal charges as well as significant discipline from the St. Johns County School Board. A concerned student told teachers the teen might have a gun and the staff alerted…
A Jacksonville man spent nine months in jail for a robbery he didn’t commit, and it took those nine months for prosecutors to pay enough attention to the case to figure it out and release him from jail. Joshua Angel was arrested in September 2012, the night two men robbed…