News Cast for March 24th:
The Okeechobee City Council voted to close Flagler Park and all downtown parks at 10 pm nightly.
It is in response to complaints about vandalism and the homeless sleeping in the park.
The council complied with a new state law that prohibits outdoor sleeping in certain public places.
Mayor Dowling Watford predicted this will shift the homeless problem to other sections of town.
“Where are they going to go? That is going to be a problem because most of them will now go to private property.”
Okeechobee Police Chief Donald Hagan said the homeless need to go to communities that can provide more services for them than Okeechobee.
“Hopefully they’ll move into bigger cities that are equipped to handle the homeless.”
City Administrator Gary Ritter said this gives the police department a little bit of leverage to get folks out of the park and stop them from sleeping in our pavilions and cattlemen’s square.
The recent Okeechobee County Sheriffs Award banquet included honors for those employees who went above and beyond the call of duty this year.
Lt. Chris Hans was honored for his help with improving and upgrading the departments technology. This includes body worn cameras, radios and drones. The drones helped locate two missing juveniles.
Corp. Michael Cauley was honored for extra work to bring down a large narcotics operation.
Chief Deputy Michael Hazellief presented an award to Matt Huffman and Jessica Bunting for the creation of an explorer program and a criminal justice program at Okeechobee High School.
Businessman Matthew Buxton was honored for supporting the Shop with the Cop Christmas gift program.
Corporal Richard Varnadore was honored with an outstanding performance medal for helping work a school threat case on a weekend to make sure the campus was safe for school on Monday.
Hazellief said the sheriff receives threat assessments from schools on a regular basis. He said Corp. Varnadore went through a weekend filled with interviews and phone calls and other methods to resolve the issue.
“We have to take these threats very seriously. He is not even a School Resource Office but he took the ball and ran with it and saved the lives of children.”
St. Lucie County Commissioners heard the cost of the new medical examiners complex has rose to over $22 million.
The construction time table is now 14 months until compeletion.
Okeechobee County will pay $1.4 million towards the construction costs.
Indian River, Martin, and St. Lucie share the facility with each paying their portion based on each counties usage of the facility and county populations.
The Indian River State College Board of Trustees approved a memorandum of understanding in late February for a free long-term lease of two acres for the facility.
The current 9,500 square foot facility will increase to more than 25,000 square feet.
The medical examiner said the facility is needed to better accommodate an increased workload as the area’s population grows.
The current annual budget of the medical examiner is $2.9 million.
The Osceola County Sheriff is conducting a death investigation after a body was found in a wooded area in Holopaw.
The area where the body was found was the location of a 20 acre brush fire last week.
The body was located by the woodline of Topeka Avenue and Lincoln Road.
Sheriff detectives said it does not appear like a suspicious death and there was no danger posed to the general public.
Some postal workers are worried about changes proposed by President Donald Trump. Over 100 USPS workers held a rally this weekend in St. Petersburg to protect Trump’s proposal to have the Commerce Department oversee the USPS.
Some protestors said they were worried that a restructuring of the post office could lead to job cuts.
One protestor said if the budget is cut it will hurt hardest to reach areas the most which would include rural areas.
An Okeechobee man wanted on drug charges was spotted at a laundry off 441 north and taken into custody without incident March 20th.
Corey Johnson, 53, faces charges of sale of methamphetamines near a church, and possession with intent to sell cocaine near a church. His bond was set at $70,000.
The Okeechobee Narcotics Task Force said Mr. Johnson sold $20 worth of cocaine in the 800 block of NW 11th Avenue on January 9th. The church was nearby at 1002 NW 9th Avenue.
An Okeechobee Correctional inmate convicted of murdering his family in Seminole County, now faces charges in a murder for hire plot.
Las Vegas Police said Grant Amato was conversing with the wife of a reality TV star via an illegal cell phone he possessed inside the prison.
The Florida Department of Corrections said officers located the cell phone in October and this led to the investigation of Victoria Goodwin, 32, of Las Vegas.
The text messages and Facebook messages allegedly included statements that the two discussed using PayPal or CashApp for payments to a hit man.
The police report said inmate Amato and Goodwin, who was using an alias, set aside $11,515 to pay the hit man.
Her husband is Aaron Goodwin, who appears on the TV series Ghost Adventures. He filed for divorce after the arrest.
The police report said Goodwin asked Amato if she was a bad person.
“(Amato) asked why she thought she may be a bad person, she replied because I chose to end his existence. Not divorce.”
Goodwin was held on $100,000 bond.