FWC Divers Search Escambia River For Attempted Murder Suspect’s Shotgun
May 14, 2016
A state law enforcement dive team from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission spent hours Friday searching the bottom of the Escambia River for a shotgun used by an attempted murder suspect.
The FWC divers performed a systematic grid search under the Highway 4 bridge between Century and Jay, including the use of sonar equipment. On Thursday, Volunteers walked an area of the river that was about 4-5 feet deep, and magnets were pulled along in hopes of snagging the gun.
But so far, attempts to recover the shotgun from the river have been unsuccessful. Authorities plan to continue their search efforts.
Steven Lloyd Billiot, age 21 of Flomaton, remains in the Santa Rosa County Jail without bond awaiting extradition back to Escambia County, AL, to face an attempted murder charge for allegedly shooting a man with a shotgun early Wednesday morning.
The Escambia County (AL) Sheriff’s Office responded to a domestic disturbance in a mobile home park on Highway 31 about 12:30 a.m. Wednesday in the small community of Canoe, just east of Atmore. They arrived to find a man critically injured by a shotgun blast to his arm. The man allegedly got into an argument over a female with Billiot before Billiot shot him. The victim was transported to a local hospital and then transferred to the USA Medical Center in Mobile.
Billiot fled the scene and was captured several hours later after a short foot pursuit from the Farmer’s Market in Jay with the assistance of the Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s Office and U.S. Marshals.
According to Escambia County (AL) Chief Deputy Mike Lambert, Billiot told authorities that midday Wednesday he tossed the shotgun off the Highway 4 bridge between Century and Jay.
NorthEscambia.com photos, click to enlarge.
Escambia Man Convicted Of Filing False Tax Returns
May 14, 2016
An Escambia County man has been convicted in federal court of filing false tax returns.
Justin T. Phan, 51, will be sentenced August 19.
Phan owned and operated the business Global Travel and Tours on Mobile Highway in Pensacola. As a part of the business, Phan prepared income tax returns for individuals in the local Vietnamese community. Phan also sold airline tickets, prepared immigration documents, and transferred money outside the United States for his customers.
During the course of the four-day bench trial, the government proved that Phan prepared and filed false tax returns for himself for tax years 2008, 2009, and 2010. As a part of his tax returns,Phan falsely claimed that this total income for the respective years was $14,317, $23,948, and $23,649. However, the government showed that Phan’s total income for each of the years was in excess of $100,000. As a result of his false tax returns, Phan kept from paying in excess of $100,000 in taxes.
Victim In State Line Road Wreck Identified By Police
May 14, 2016
Authorities have identified the man killed in a single vehicle traffic crash just before midnight Wednesday at the Alabama/Florida state line in Flomaton.
According to Flomaton Police Chief Bryan Davis, 30-year old John Kyle Bell of Flomaton was westbound on State Line Road near Highland Avenue.. His 2001 Chevrolet Blazer left the roadway, struck a utility pole and overturned several times, coming to rest in front of the Flomaton Funeral Home.
Bell was ejected during the crash and pronounced deceased on the scene by Escambia County (FL) EMS. There were no other occupants in the vehicle.
Photos for NorthEscambia.com, click to enlarge.
Jay Man Faces 41 Years For Fatal DUI Crash
May 14, 2016
A Jay man is facing 41 years in prison for a fatal DUI cash just hours after he was released from jail.
Melvin D. Hawthorne was convicted by a Santa Rosa County Jury of DUI manslaughter, vehicular homicide, driving while license cancelled suspended, or revoked with careless or negligent operation of a vehicle resulting in death, DUI with serious bodily injury, and DUI with property damage.
Hawthorne faces a 41 year prison sentence as a habitual felony offender and as a prison releasee reoffender. Sentencing is set for August 11.
Hawthorne was released on bond from the Santa Rosa County Department of Corrections at approximately 9:00 a.m. on August 17, 2014.
About 12 hours later, Hawthorne was speeding in his stepfather’s black Nissan truck east of Berrydale on Highway 4 when he attempted to pass a Ford F150 towing a boat that was traveling at 55 mph. Hawthorne side-swiped the Ford and continued down Highway 4. Hawthorne then ran the stop sign at the intersection of Highway 4 and Highway 87 and continued to speed. He failed to turn and crashed into a railing. Hawthorne then backed up and again sped down Highway 4. He rear-ended a Dodge Neon carrying five people.
A passenger sitting in the rear of the Neon, Shawn McLaughlin, was entrapped in the Neon and died at the scene of the crash. Another passenger sitting in the rear seat of the Neon, Raistlin Bunch, was also entrapped in the vehicle and suffered a severe leg fracture.
A blood sample was taken from Hawthorne and tested positive for high levels of methamphetamine. Hawthorne was identified as the driver of the Nissan truck through forensic evidence as well as witness statements.
Florida Gov’t Weekly Roundup: Waiting To Inhale
May 14, 2016
With all due respect to Kermit the Frog, it’s getting easier to be green in Florida.
With more than 3,000 people descending on Central Florida for the nation’s premiere cannabis business trade show this week, and a new poll again showing that voters seem poised to approve wide-ranging medical marijuana, it looks increasingly like the state might be going to pot.
There are still obstacles for those who would allow the green leafy substance for medicinal uses, and voters have seemed enthusiastic about the idea before, only to narrowly reject the idea. But optimism seems to be abundant in the industry, and not just because of contact highs.
This week, polls also showed a tight race for Florida’s 29 electoral college votes — tighter than Democrats likely anticipated with the unpredictable Donald Trump in the running — and a still-murky battle for an open U.S. Senate seat that has been overshadowed by the presidential contest.
The fate of the state’s death penalty was also looking cloudier, as a South Florida judge ruled a new version of capital sentencing approved by the Legislature was unconstitutional.
HIGH TIMES FOR MARIJUANA IN FLORIDA?
Kissimmee might not seem like the ideal place for a three-day gathering on the business of pot. Central Florida is more known for family-friendly industries, like Disney and University Studios, than for weed. But organizers said the choice of the Sunshine State was intentional.
“We’re here in Florida, because at all of our national events that we’ve hosted, we’ve had very strong attendance out of Florida,” said Marijuana Business Daily CEO Cassandra Farrington, whose publication organized the convention at the Gaylord Palms Resort & Convention Center. “We are confident that when, and it’s not going to be an if, when Florida legalizes marijuana on a medical or a recreational level, the Florida market is going to be absolutely huge.”
The state is projected to be home to the second-largest population of marijuana consumers if it legalizes medical marijuana.
Florida legalized non-euphoric cannabis for patients with severe muscle spasms or cancer two years ago, though the products aren’t available yet. This year, lawmakers approved full-strength cannabis for terminally ill patients.
But voters will have an opportunity in November to expand things even further if they approve what is known as Amendment 2, largely bankrolled by Orlando trial lawyer John Morgan. The proposal would expand medical marijuana for patients with a broad array of diseases.
“Your market is huge and the demographics are so perfect for cannabis,” said Sara Batterby, president and CEO of Hifi Farms in Hillsborough, Ore., who left her Silicon Valley job as a venture capitalist to start up a grow operation.
Supporters got some good news when a poll released Wednesday by Quinnipiac University showed that 80 percent of voters back the measure. Support for the idea is widespread, with large majorities of Republicans, Democrats, men, women, younger voters and older voters approving.
The backing is well above the 60 percent threshold needed to get the language added to the Constitution. But a similar measure had the same kind of support two years ago, only for the referendum to fall narrowly short of making the cut.
People United for Medical Marijuana, a group that backed the 2014 initiative, tweaked the wording of this year’s proposal to try to help inoculate it against political and legal attacks.
And Morgan spoke Tuesday at the marijuana conference, peppering his 50-minute speech with f-bombs, attacks on the Florida Legislature and a declaration that the future of medical marijuana has reached a “tipping point” in Florida and the nation.
“There is no state in the union that is more ready for this industry than this state,” Morgan said, before closing his speech with a prayer from Mother Teresa and a standing ovation.
FLORIDA, FLORIDA, FLORIDA
Pot supporters were not the only ones eying public opinion surveys this week. With Donald Trump having vanquished his last remaining competitors for the GOP presidential nomination and Hillary Clinton moving ever closer to clinching the Democratic nod, the general election campaign is taking shape. And Florida — once again — looks like a dead heat in the early going.
The Quinnipiac University poll showed Clinton at 43 percent in Florida and Trump at 42 percent. While Clinton is widely expected to win the Democratic nomination, poll numbers are nearly identical when her primary opponent, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, is matched up against Trump — 44 percent for Sanders, 42 percent for Trump.
The poll shows Clinton and Trump are unpopular with huge swaths of Florida voters. Each is viewed favorably by only 37 percent of voters and is seen unfavorably by 57 percent.
Gender gap? It’s almost a gender chasm. Clinton, seeking to become the first woman president, leads by a margin of 48 percent to 35 percent among women, while Trump leads by a margin of 49 percent to 36 percent among men.
And racial or ethnic differences are even more pronounced. Trump leads Clinton by a margin of 52 percent to 33 percent among white voters, while Clinton leads 63-20 among non-white voters. White women are virtually split on the candidates, but Trump leads by a huge margin —- 61 percent to 25 percent — among white men, the poll shows.
“Republicans’ weakness among minority voters is well known,” said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac Poll, in an analysis accompanying the results. “But the reason this race is so close overall is Clinton’s historic weakness among white men. In Florida, she is getting just 25 percent from white men.”
Things were even less clear in the race to succeed U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, who decided against seeking re-election and instead ran unsuccessfully against Trump and others for the Republican presidential nomination. Democratic Congressman Patrick Murphy, the choice of his party’s establishment, appeared to do slightly better than other Senate candidates in head-to-head matchups in the poll, but large numbers of voters were still undecided.
For instance, Murphy led Republican businessman Carlos Beruff by a margin of 38 percent to 32 percent and led Republican Lt. Gov. Carlos Lopez-Cantera by a margin of 38 percent to 34 percent. He also led Republican businessman Todd Wilcox by a margin of 38 percent to 33 percent. But Murphy was virtually deadlocked with GOP Congressman Ron DeSantis and led Congressman David Jolly by only 3 percentage points.
Matchups between the other leading Democrat in the race, Congressman Alan Grayson, and each of the Republican candidates were within the poll’s 3-point margin of error.
“The Florida U.S. Senate race is wide open with none of the seven candidates particularly well-known to voters,” Brown said.
DEATH PENALTY RULED UNCONSTITUTIONAL — AGAIN
When lawmakers were debating this year how to respond to a U.S. Supreme Court decision that tossed the state’s previous regime for instituting the death penalty, the issues at play in the high court’s ruling weren’t the ones that sparked the biggest debate. What caused most of the division was whether to require the votes of all 12 jurors to impose the death penalty, instead of a majority or supermajority.
In the end, the House and Senate compromised on a proposal that would allow the votes of 10 jurors to impose the death penalty. In a ruling issued Monday, a Miami-Dade County judge said in no uncertain terms that anything less that unanimity wasn’t good enough.
“A 21st-century Floridian seeking to argue that the right purported to be protected by (the state Constitution) does not include the requirement of a unanimous verdict must be prepared to rebut the unequivocal expression of the common law, the received wisdom of 19th-century Florida lawyers and judges, a handful of reported Florida opinions, and a century-and-a-half of shared understanding,” wrote Circuit Judge Milton Hirsch in an 18-page opinion. “And he must be prepared to do so without any ammunition at all, for he will find no Florida cases, no Florida law-review articles, and no Florida history to support his position.”
Hirsch’s findings came in the case of Karon Gaiter, who is charged with one count of first-degree murder. And while Hirsch’s findings were on different grounds, it was rooted in part on the dispute that caused the U.S. Supreme Court in January to strike down the old Florida law.
Under the old capital punishment system, a majority of jurors could issue a death-penalty recommendation that could be followed or ignored by the judge in the case. But under the new law, at least 10 members of the jury must vote for capital punishment in order for a convicted murderer to be put to death; the judge can instead sentence the defendant to life in prison, but can’t impose the death penalty if the jury hasn’t recommended it.
That, Hirsch wrote, essentially changed the jury’s decision from a “straw poll” to a verdict, which has always been understood to require a unanimous vote.
The high court’s 8-1 decision, in a case known as Hurst v. Florida, found that the state’s system of giving judges — and not juries — the power to impose death sentences is an unconstitutional violation of defendants’ Sixth Amendment right to trial by jury.
The Hurst decision dealt with what are known as aggravating circumstances that must be determined before defendants can be sentenced to death. A 2002 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, in a case known as Ring v. Arizona, requires that determinations of such aggravating circumstances must be made by juries, not judges.
Under Florida’s new law, juries will have to unanimously determine “the existence of at least one aggravating factor” before defendants can be eligible for death sentences.
STORY OF THE WEEK: As the marijuana industry held a convention in Central Florida, a new poll showed strong support for pharmacological pot.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “Sometimes I go to happy hour and I have one drink. Sometimes I end up closing the bar and wind up at the Waffle House at 3 a.m.”—John Morgan, who said he has “no clue” how much he’ll spend to support the medical marijuana initiative on this year’s ballot.
by Brandon Larrabee, The News Service of Florida
Blue Wahoos Drop Finale To Lookouts
May 14, 2016
The Pensacola Blue Wahoos (21-14) dropped the final game of the series against Chattanooga (15-20), 2-1, Friday night at AT&T Field despite Calten Daal extending his hit-streak to 12 games.
Daal, who played shortstop, was 2-3 on the night and is hitting .442 this season since returning from the disabled list.
Chattanooga scored first in the bottom of the first after a double by Daniel Palka to score Shannon Wilkerson.
Pensacola evened the game in the third when Tony Renda hit a sacrifice fly to bring home Eric Jagielo.
The Lookouts secured the win in the bottom of the sixth after D.J. Hicks scored on a force out by T.J. White.
LHP Amir Garrett, the Reds No. 4 prospect according to MLB Pipeline, went six innings giving up nine hits, two runs, both earned, while walking one and striking out three. After Friday, Garrett is now 3-3 with a 1.51 ERA.
The Pensacola bullpen shutdown the Lookouts the final two innings of the game. Nick Rout allowed one hit and posted two strikeouts in the seventh. Jimmy Moran, who made his first appearance of the season, struck out this side in the eighth.
One Injured In Highway 29, Highway 97 Crash
May 13, 2016
One person was injured in a crash involving a pickup truck and a semi late Friday morning at Highway 29 and Highway 97.
According to the Florida Highway Patrol, 27-year old Bert Walker of Cantonment was traveling north in the left turn lane on Highway 29. The semi truck, driven by 59-year old Mark Lambert of Atmore, was southbound on Highway 29. Walker then turned his 2007 Chevrolet Colorado pickup into the direct path of the semi, the FHP said.
Walker was transported to Sacred Heart Hospital with minor injuries. Lambert was not injured.
Walker was cited for failure to yield the right of way.
This was the first injury crash with significant property damage at the intersection since a traffic light was activated in June 2015.
NorthEscambia.com photo.
Attempted Murder Suspect Busted; Escambia River Searched For Shotgun
May 13, 2016
An Alabama attempted murder suspect was found in Jay, and now authorities hope to find the weapon he used at the bottom of the Escambia River.
Steven Lloyd Billiot, age 21 of Flomaton, is being held in the Santa Rosa County Jail without bond awaiting extradition back to Escambia County, AL, to face an attempted murder charge for allegedly shooting a man with a shotgun early Wednesday morning.
The Escambia County (AL) Sheriff’s Office responded to a domestic disturbance in a mobile home park on Highway 31 about 12:30 a.m. Wednesday in the small community of Canoe, just east of Atmore. They arrived to find a man critically injured by a shotgun blast to his arm. The man allegedly got into an argument over a female with Billiot before Billiot shot him. The victim was transported to a local hospital and then transferred to the USA Medical Center in Mobile.
Billiot fled the scene and was captured several hours later after a short foot pursuit from the Farmer’s Market in Jay with the assistance of the Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s Office and U.S. Marshals.
According to Escambia County (AL) Chief Deputy Mike Lambert, Billiot told authorities that midday Wednesday he tossed the shotgun off the Highway 4 bridge between Century and Jay.
Thursday afternoon, multiple law enforcement agencies took part in a search for the weapon in the Escambia River below the spot on the bridge Billiot said he thew out the weapon. Volunteers walked an area of the river that was about 4-5 feet deep, and magnets were pulled along in hopes of snagging the gun. The search was unsuccessful.
Authorities are expected to continue to search the river on Friday.
Pictured top and below: Authorities search the Escambia River below the Highway 4 bridge for a shotgun used by an attempted murder suspect. NorthEscambia.com photos, click to enlarge.
New School Names: Beulah Middle And Kingsfield Elementary
May 13, 2016
Beulah Middle School and Kingsfield Elementary School are the names for two new schools in Escambia County. The names were presented at a school board workshop on Thursday from a naming committee; a final vote on the names will take place at a regular school board meeting.
The new middle school property, likely to be named Beulah Middle School, is located at 6001 West Nine Mile Road. The new elementary, likely to be named Kingsfield Elementary School, will be located at 900 West Kingsfield Road.
Both schools will be completed in the spring of 2018.
Man Charged With DUI, Hit And Run After Hitting Ambulance
May 13, 2016
An Escambia County man was charged with DUI after hitting an Escambia County EMS ambulance Thursday.
The Florida Highway Patrol said 31-year Joshua L. Horne pulled out of a parking lot on New Warrington Road into the path the ambulance about 11:25 a.m.. Horne then fled resulting crash in his Honda Civic and was later apprehended by troopers on Pine Forest Road.
Horne was charged with DUI, leaving the scene of a crash with property damage, reckless driving and turning left in front of approaching traffic..
The two people in the ambulance, 30-year old Erin Waldner and 43-year old Michael Mcardell, were not injured.