On Tuesday night Steve Berke, the Miami Beach filmmaker and mayoral candidate, received a horrifying phone call. His girlfriend was on the line, and in a frantic voice said she had just encountered an intruder in their Miami Beach home, holding Berke’s laptop in the couple’s bedroom. Berke’s girlfriend relayed…
Seven and a half years after the murder of NFL star and former Miami Hurricane Sean Taylor, justice is almost complete. Charles Wardlow, now just 25, plead guilty to his part in the shocking death today and was immediately sentenced to 30 years in jail. He is the fourth member of…
Yesterday, a 15-year-old football player at Miami Killian Senior High wound up in the hospital after being stabbed in the school’s cafeteria. The suspect: a 17-year-old female classmate. The victim is recovering from surgery to repair a pierced lung and artery Nicklaus Children’s Hospital and is in stable condition, while…
Three years ago Ralph Mata was a highly respected lieutenant in the Miami-Dade Polcie Department. His resume included helping to dismantle two gangs in Miami Gardens, using drug sniffing dogs to find contraband at Miami International Airport and investigating police corruption as part of the Internal Affairs department. But while…
Early on Sunday morning, a blue BMW sped through a well-lit street corner near King of Diamonds, smashing into a young Canadian tourist in town for Ultra Music Fest and then speeding away as he fell critically injured to the pavement. Police now say that the driver behind the wheel…
Ultra Music Festival promised to up security and safety this year after a number of troubling incidents increased calls to boot the EDM-fest from Downtown last year. They brought in former Miami Beach police chief Ray Martinez as head of security, and changed policy to no longer admit minors to…
By all accounts, Ultra Music Festival was a calmer, more peaceful affair in downtown Miami this year. Arrests were down sharply from 2014 with Miami police handling festival security, while new procedures and bans on everything from glowsticks to masks helped control the crowds. But police this morning are untangling…
Last spring, New Times published the results of a five-month investigation into Miami-Dade’s guardianship system — the program set up by the courts to protect the assets of vulnerable people. Except in South Florida, it had become a politically-connected, un-regulated cesspool of abuse. One year later, as Tallahassee works to…
The first call came to police just after rush hour, around 7 p.m. — two 16-year-olds had been gunned down on a busy Allapattah corner, killing one and wounding the other. Just two hours later, as crime scene technicians were still working in the taped-off murder site, another frantic call…
Cesar Vasquez is a 28-year-old, soft-spoken AT&T customer service rep with a flowing imam-style beard and dark features. On a recent still, scorching day around 3 p.m., he leads me to a shady spot near the corner of a large apartment building in Naranja, five miles north of Homestead. Soon…
Ana Quincoces’ time on The Real Housewives of Miami was brief, but her vacation time down in the keys was cut even shorter. First by cockroaches and then by the law. Quincoces has a suspended license, but continued to drive freely. Apparently she’s been spending a lot of time down…
Among the eight men charged by the feds over the Biogenesis steroid scandal, only former University of Miami pitching coach Lazer Collazo has managed to beat the rap. Despite allegations from the clinic’s owner, Tony Bosch, that Collazo had helped recruit young athletes to the Coral Gables clinic, the government…
U.S. Customs and Border Protection made interesting discovery back on February 27th right here on the Miami River. They found 797 pounds of cocaine hidden inside a boat on the Miami River, leading to one of the largest recent cocaine seizure in Miami in recent memory. The Miami Border Enforcement Security…
It was less than two years ago that Lucie Tondreau was elected as North Miami’s first female Hatiian-American mayor. This morning she was sentenced to 65 months behind bars for her role in a real estate fraud scheme. No one said that corruption wasn’t an equal opportunity in Miami-Dade. Tondreau…
Last month, faux doctor Tony Bosch at last faced the music for running a freewheeling steroid clinic from a storefront on bustling South Dixie Highway in Coral Gables. He’ll spend four years in federal prison for posing as a doctor and selling roids and HGH to scores of athletes, bodybuilders,…
Settle down, this has nothing to do with towing on the Beach, but the FBI did make six arrests for local towing corruption involving city of Miami police officers and public safety aids. When you get into a car accident and an officer arrives on the seen in Miami you…
Dan Bilzerian’s Instagram feed is like a 14-year-old boy’s fantasy world come to life. Guns, beautiful women who forgot their pants, more guns and baby alligators at fancy nightclubs keep Bilzerian’s 7.1 million followers coming back for more. The trust fund playboy and professional poker player’s lifestyle seemed to at…
Last weekend, a 52-year-old woman was arrested at Miami International Airport under bizarre circumstances. In videos captured by fellow passengers on her Nicaragua-to-Miami flight, Karen Halnon yelled loudly about the U.S. “declaring war” on Venezuela and about her support for Hugo Chavez. She also lit up a cigarette mid-flight. A…
If a Miamian finds themselves in the middle of Wyoming, America’s least populace state, its probably for very odd reasons. Edelberto Herrera does not disprove this hunch. The 55-year-old Miami resident was stopped recently for speeding while traveling through Interstate 80 in the state, and investigates soon discovered that he 75…
Jay Jones was on the phone with his girlfriend when her voice was suddenly drowned out by a mechanical roar. The 29-year-old glanced up to find a trio of angry-looking Miami Beach cops atop sputtering ATVs. “I gotta go,” Jones told his girlfriend. “I’ll call you right back.” Not on…
Miami-Dade Schools have been rocked by a number of troubling incidents involving sex and abuse this week, and its only Tuesday morning. First came news that a Kindergarten teacher dug his nails into a student because he wanted to see her cry. Then came the arrest of a high school…
As a top commander in El Salvador during that country’s brutal civil war, Carlos Vides presided over tens of thousands of civilian murders and systemic torturing. For decades Vides has lived with his wife in a comfortable home in Palm Coast, but now the former strongman is on the brink of…
