Temporary Bridge Opens On Highway 97
May 17, 2018
Traffic is now moving on a temporary bridge on Highway 97 over Sandy Hollow Creek near Davisville.
Crews will now begin replacing and adjacent 78-year-old bridge with a new 12-foot wide bridge with eight-foot shoulders and a concrete barrier railing. The bridge approaches will also be resurfaced. The entire project is anticipated to be complete in the fall of this year, weather permitting.
The posted speed limit is 45 mph on the bridge. Also, a weight restriction is in place on the temporary bridgel vehicles weighing over 88,000 pounds and cranes are prohibited.
NorthEscambia.com photo, click to enlarge.
Ernest Ward Middle Holds Appreciation Day Celebration
May 17, 2018
Ernest Ward Middle School held an Appreciation Day Celebration Wednesday to thank businesses and groups that have supported the school during the past year.
The school recognized Craig and Bonnie Exner, Barrineau Park Historical Society; Christa Wilson, Un-Dents PDR; Annie Nowak, Poarch Creen Indians; Sabrina Owens, EREC; Haley Revette and Nellie Salter, Navy Federal FCU; Billy Danielson, Smith Tractor; Joey Hetrick, Escambia Farm Bureau; William Reynolds, NorthEscambia.com; and Michelle Taylor and Steven Harrell, Escambia County School District.
NorthEscambia.com photos, click to enlarge.
Ransom Middle Band Performs For Pine Meadow Fifth Graders
May 17, 2018
The Ransom Middle School band performed at Pensacola Meadow Elementary School Wednesday, giving fifth graders a peek at what they could be doing a year from now. Courtesy image for NorthEscambia.com, click to enlarge.
Escambia County 4-H To Host Boots Vs. Badges Fundraiser In Molino
May 17, 2018
Escambia County 4-H Council will host a Boots Vs. Badges Challenge Saturday to raise funds for the Gulf Coast Kid’s House. The fundraiser will take place from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Escambia County 4-H Center at 5681 Chalker Road, Molino. General admission to the event is $5 per vehicle.
The event will feature U.S. military groups competing against Escambia County Sheriff’s Office deputies in a timed obstacle course race at 10:30 a.m., along with a car show at 2 p.m., kids’ activities and vendor booths. A second obstacle course challenge open to the general public will take place at 11:30 a.m.
Admission and competition prices:
- U.S. military and ECSO- Free
- Open Challenge participants (general public) – $10 each
Age range groups for the obstacle course challenge:
- 14-17
- 18-34
- 35-50
- 51-up
Child admission to bounce house, petting zoo and event:
- Ages 3-5 – $3
- Ages 5-13 $5
Vendor booths:
- $25 each, limit to two per 10×10 area
Car show:
- $25 for judged vehicles
- $15 for for display only vehicles
Registration for the car show will take place from 7-10 a.m., and registration for the Boots Vs. Badges Challenge and Open Challenge will take place from 9:15 to 11 a.m. For more information, please contact 4hbvschallenge@gmail.com.
Escambia Man Sentenced For Cigarette Robberies
May 17, 2018
An Escambia County has been sentenced to over a decade in prison for stealing cigarettes from four convenience stores .
James Levoy Foster II, 46, was sentenced by Circuit Judge John Miller to 12.5 years in state prison.
Foster pled guilty to three counts of robbery without a weapon, one count of robbery with a weapon, and one count of resisting an officer without violence. The four convenience store robberies occurred between June 11 and July 17, 2017.
On June 11, 2017, Foster entered the Tom Thumb on Creighton Road, walked behind the cashier’s counter, and began to take several packs of cigarettes. Words were exchanged between the clerk and Foster when the clerk tried to stop him from leaving the store. Foster then knocked the clerk to the ground and walked out of the store.
On June 11, 2017, Foster walked into the Smart Fill convenience store on Davis Highway and attempted to purchase cigarettes with a debit card. After the card was declined, Foster walked around the counter and demanded cigarettes from the clerk while holding a knife. Foster took 13 cartons of cigarettes and then left the store.
On July 11, 2017, Foster walked into the Mom and Pop’s Convenience Mart on Olive Road and demanded the clerk give him several packs of cigarettes. When the clerk refused, Foster threatened to jump behind the counter and take them. The clerk then provided several packs of cigarettes to Foster. Before leaving the store, Foster threatened the clerk to not call 911.
On July 17, 2017, Foster went inside the Circle K on Garden Street, walked behind the counter, and started to take several cartons of cigarettes. He began telling the clerks that “He didn’t want to hurt them, but if they called the cops he would.” Foster then walked out of the store with the cigarette cartons.
Foster was arrested on July 18, 2017. He admitted to committing all four robberies.
Foster’s prior criminal history includes convictions for battery, trespass, grand theft, aggravated assault with a weapon, burglary, grand theft auto, criminal mischief, disorderly conduct, petit theft and resisting officers.
FEMA Chief Preaches Local Prepardness For Disasters
May 17, 2018
Local officials across Florida shouldn’t rely on the federal government to be on the ground everywhere a day or days after the next natural disaster, the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency said Wednesday during the annual Governor’s Conference on Hurricanes.
FEMA Administrator Brock Long bluntly stressed that his agency and others that offer disaster assistance have been stretched thin after a series of 2017 storms and wildfires, as well as the ongoing volcanic eruption in Hawaii, so local officials should have their own plans to provide water and other essential services for the first few days following a disaster.
“If you don’t have the ability to do things such as provide your own food and water and your own commodities to your citizens for the first 48 to 72 hours, and I’m asking you to consider pre-event management concepts, I’m questioning whether or not you’re an EMAP (Emergency Management Accreditation Program) accredited emergency management agency,” Long said while appearing at the week-long training event at the Palm Beach County Convention Center in West Palm Beach.
“If you’re waiting on FEMA to run your commodities, that’s not the solution,” Long added. “I can’t guarantee that we can be right on time to backfill everything you need.”
With the start of the six-month hurricane season two weeks away, Long said FEMA isn’t “going to back away” when disasters strike. But he said local and state capabilities need to be strengthened, such as signing deals with private water bottlers and debris haulers and hardening local communications systems.
He talked of a need to revamp the national flood-insurance program, saying that due to “affordability” about 80 percent of homeowners in Houston didn’t have flood insurance before Hurricane Harvey hit last year.
Long said he’s also trying to revamp FEMA’s business model, as he estimated the agency spent about $300 million a day responding to disasters in 2017, with hotel bills at $3.5 million a day for displaced residents due to hurricanes Irma in Florida, Maria in Puerto Rico and Harvey in Texas, as well as floods, tornadoes and fires.
“The bottom line is that my operational capacity internally does not grow with the number of events that we have,” Long said.
Long’s comment came after Rep. Jeanette Nunez, a Miami Republican who oversaw the state House’s response to Hurricane Irma, encouraged emergency managers to keep pushing for storm hardening projects. She noted many storm-related proposals failed to advance during this year’s legislative session when lawmakers redirected $400 million to respond to the February massacre at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
“We really had to struggle at the end to find a way to keep our budget balanced but also address that particular tragedy,” Nunez said.
Lawmakers approved storm-related money for such things as farm repairs, affordable housing in Monroe County and to help students displaced from Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Still, many of the high-profile measures crafted in response to hurricanes Irma and Maria failed to win support. They included strengthening the electric grid, creating a strategic fuel-reserve task force, requiring the Division of Emergency Management to use certified sign-language interpreters during emergency broadcasts and using rail-tank cars to bring fuel into evacuation areas to avoid a repeat of runs on gas stations.
“Those are good baselines to start for the upcoming session, next year,” said Nunez, the chairwoman of the House Select Committee on Hurricane Response and Preparedness who will not return for the 2019 session due to term limits.
Meanwhile, Gov. Rick Scott told people attending the conference to “pray” Florida won’t be impacted by hurricanes for the third consecutive year.
“Hopefully we won’t have any hurricanes. It would be nice not to have, in my eighth year, any hurricanes,” Scott said.
Scott also praised people attending the conference for their work to restore services following hurricanes the past two years.
The governor’s office announced on Wednesday the state has submitted a $616 million request to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for ongoing Hurricane Irma recovery efforts.
HUD has 45 days to respond to the state’s request for the Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery program money, which would go into providing assistance to impacted businesses, repairing homes, building new affordable rental units and buying land for affordable housing.
The federal program requires at least 80 percent of the money go to the hardest-hit counties and ZIP codes. As part of the state’s request, the areas listed in the application include Brevard, Broward, Collier, Duval, Lee, Miami-Dade, Monroe, Orange, Polk and Volusia counties, as well as ZIP codes 32136 in Flagler County, 32091 in Bradford County, 32068 in Clay County and 34266 in DeSoto County.
The money would also help Puerto Ricans who have relocated to Florida due to Hurricane Maria.
by Jim Turner, The News Service of Florida
Judge Weighs Ban On Patients Smoking Pot
May 17, 2018
Cathy Jordan credits pot with helping her defeat the odds in the battle against Lou Gehrig’s disease she’s waged for more than 30 years.
And although she can now legally obtain the cannabis treatment she’s relied on for decades, Jordan is prohibited from what she and her doctors swear is the best way for her to consume her medicine — smoking joints.
Jordan is among the plaintiffs challenging a state law that bans smoking pot as a route of administration for the hundreds of thousands of patients who are eligible for medical marijuana treatment in Florida.
With her husband, Bob, serving as her interpreter during a trial Wednesday, Jordan told Leon County Circuit Judge Karen Gievers and a packed courtroom that she started smoking pot a few years after she was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, in 1986.
“My doctors are really not concerned with the risk because I’m still alive. In ‘86, I was given three to five years to live. And I’m still here,” Jordan, draped in a pink shawl, testified.
Wednesday’s hearing came more than 18 months after voters overwhelmingly approved the constitutional amendment that broadly legalized marijuana for patients with debilitating medical conditions like Jordan.
Lawmakers last year enacted the prohibition on joints — derided as “no smoke is a joke” by critics — largely to protect the public from the ill effects of smoking, lawyers for the state argued.
Senior Assistant Attorney General Karen Brodeen said “smoking should never be a route of administration for any medicinal product.”
“Smoking is a crude delivery system that delivers harmful substances. It is associated with various respiratory symptoms. It contains many of the same toxins as does tobacco smoke,” she said.
But Jordan said none of the dozens of doctors she’s seen over more than 30 years have ever told her to stop smoking marijuana. In fact, her current neurologist advised her to do just the opposite.
“They’re actually more interested in how healthy I am after having ALS for so long,” said Jordan.
The prohibition on smoking was included in a state law aimed at implementing the 2016 constitutional amendment, but John Morgan, the Orlando trial lawyer who largely bankrolled what was known as Amendment 2 and initiated the lawsuit, is among those who maintain that the smoking ban runs afoul of the Constitution. Gievers did not rule on the challenge Wednesday.
“The amendment itself says smoking is not allowed in public places. I don’t think you need to be too much of a legal scholar to understand that means it is allowed in other places,” Morgan told reporters before the hearing began.
Morgan and the other lawyers representing the plaintiffs also used a “slippery slope” argument, saying lawmakers and health officials could have banned a variety of other routes of administration.
“Look, if the Legislature wanted to, they could have banned edibles, which they tried to do. They could have banned oils, which they tried to do. They could have banned smoke and they could have said, ‘Listen, we’re just going to let it be done by suppository.’ What stops that?” Morgan said.
During arguments Wednesday, Jon Mills, a former House speaker and former dean of the University of Florida law school who was one of the chief authors of Amendment 2, told Gievers the law passed last year is in “irreconcilable conflict” with the Constitution.
Mills also pointed to the Legislature’s outlawing of smoking marijuana as evidence that the Constitution permits it.
“Why would you act to exclude smoking if smoking wasn’t authorized?” he asked.
Lawyers for the state, however, argue that the amendment does not expressly allow smoking and gives Florida officials broad authority to “regulate health, safety and welfare” of the public.
“It’s not anything goes,” Senior Deputy Solicitor General Rachel Nordby said.
But other routes of administration are problematic for Jordan, who grows her own marijuana.
Vaping makes her gag. Edibles give her stomach cramps. Smoking gives Jordan “dry mouth,” which offsets the excessive drooling caused by ALS, she said. And it relaxes her muscles, increases her appetite and helps combat depression, said the diminutive Jordan, who frequently breaks out in an infectious smile.
“It just makes my life a lot more bearable,” she said.
But Nordby told the judge that several provisions in the amendment highlight that “the state has a role in setting parameters” for marijuana use, including the ban on smoking.
“It is not whatever the doctor says. It is not anything goes,” she said.
The plaintiffs, in contrast, insist that the Constitution allows smokable marijuana in a variety of ways, including how marijuana is defined.
The constitutional amendment relied on a 2014 definition of marijuana in Florida criminal law, which includes “all parts of any plant of the genus Cannabis, whether growing or not.” That includes whole-flower marijuana, which is used for smoking, the plaintiffs contend.
The plaintiffs are also relying on an “analysis of intent” of the amendment, published prior to the November election and disseminated broadly to the media and the public, to bolster their argument that smokable pot always was part of the plan.
Ben Pollara, who was the campaign manager for Amendment 2 and is president of Florida for Care, a non-profit organization advocating for patients and the medical marijuana industry, testified Wednesday that the public was fully aware that the proposal would have legalized smoking of medical marijuana.
“It was just assumed by most, if not all, that when we were talking about marijuana, we were talking about the green, leafy stuff that you smoke,” Pollara, one of the authors of the analysis, said.
Speaking to reporters after Wednesday’s hearing, Morgan called Cathy Jordan a “Florida hero” and urged the state to back down.
“Enough is enough. Let’s stop the politics. Let’s let these people live their final years with dignity,” he said.
In a separate marijuana-related lawsuit, Gievers telegraphed how she is likely to rule in the smokable pot case. Gievers last month gave the go-ahead to Tampa strip-club owner Joe Redner to grow his own marijuana for use in juicing. The 77-year-old Redner’s doctors ordered the juicing treatment to keep his lung cancer in remission.
“Nothing in the amendment authorizes the Department of Health (or any other part of Florida’s government) to ignore the rights of qualifying patients to access the medical marijuana treatment to which they are entitled under the Florida Constitution, or to exclude any method by which qualifying patients may take their medicine,” Gievers wrote in a 22-page order, in which she also scolded health officials for being “non-compliant” with the Florida constitutional requirements.
The state has appealed Gievers’ decision in the Redner lawsuit, and Redner has asked the Florida Supreme Court to weigh in on the case.
by Dara Kam, The News Service of Florida
ECSO: Cantonment Man Charged After Pulling Gun
May 17, 2018
A Cantonment man was arrested after allegedly pulling a gun at a local VFW post.
Larry Wayne Goodwin, 65, was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
Goodwin got into an argument with his wife at the VFW on Lillian Highway, according to an arrest report. While across the room from his wife and her friend, he pulled out what the friend “observed to be” a handgun before putting it back in his pocket. The friend said he then pointed at her with his hand, making gesture as if he was pulling a trigger to shoot her.
He was released from the Escambia County Jail on a $10,000 bond.
Atmore Woman Killed In Highway 31 Accident
May 16, 2018
A two vehicle accident Tuesday afternoon claimed the life of an Atmore woman.
Alabama State Troopers said 25-year old Tracie Shenaye Young was killed when her 2009 Chevrolet Cobalt collided with a 2004 GMC Envoy driven by Carolyn Jean Bartley of Bay Minette. The accident occurred about 5 p.m. on Highway 31 near West Road.
Young was pronounced deceased at the scene, according to state troopers. She was not wearing a seat belt.
Bartley was transported to Atmore Community Hospital. Her condition was not available.
The accident remains under investigation by Alabama State Troopers.
ECSO: Century Man Arrested With Ecstasy, Marijuana And Cocaine
May 16, 2018
A Century man was arrested on multiple drug charges after a Pensacola traffic stop.
The Escambia County Sheriff’s Office stopped Ladarrious Lett’s vehicle on Pensacola Boulevard at I-10 due to a seat belt violation. The officer reported smelling marijuana coming from the vehicle during the traffic stop.
After Lett was placed into custody, a search revealed marijuana, spice, Ecstasy pills, cocaine and $3,208 in cash on his person, according to an arrest report, along with a partially smoked marijuana blunt. The cash and drugs we’re seized.
Lett was charged with two counts of possession of a controlled substance, possession of cocaine, and possession of marijuana with the intent to distribute.
Lett was released from the Escambia County Jail on a $2,000 bond.