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Players at a Thursday night card game in a Pompano Beach park ran for their lives when two armed robbers showed up and demanded everyone’s money, police said. When the card players, including 18-year-old Brian Wallace Jr., made a run for it the robbers, started shooting, according to the Broward Sheriff’s Office. It wasn’t until Wallace and a relative made it to the shelter of their nearby car that Wallace realized he had been shot, said Gina Carter, a spokeswoman for the Sheriff’s... Read More

One week after vowing to stay in his post, UCF President Dale Whittaker bowed Tuesday to intense pressure and offered to resign amid investigations into the misappropriation of nearly $85 million for construction projects. Whittaker, less than eight months into his tenure, is being forced out by a scandal involving the misuse of state funds that has drawn rebuke from the Legislature and the Board of Governors, which oversees the state university system. He has maintained he didn’t know... Read More

Fort Lauderdale residents have never been this aggravated with traffic, the city’s latest survey showed. But city commissioners Tuesday said they’re not ready to make an aggressive move to take over the traffic signal system in Fort Lauderdale. Instead, they’ll rest their hopes on Broward County, which passed a sales tax increase in November to ease congestion. Among the county’s promises: more work tinkering with the timing of traffic lights, so drivers aren’t fuming as they... Read More

A West Boca mother of four was shot to death by her boyfriend, who then turned the gun on himself in what police are calling a murder-suicide. The bodies of Laura Randall, 53, and Gregory Schatz, 45, were discovered by Randall’s 17-year-old son a little before 4 p.m. Monday, relatives and authorities said. The double shooting took place in a home in the 22000 block of Southwest 57th Circle, east of State Road 7 and north of West Hillsboro Boulevard, said Teri Barbera, spokeswoman for the... Read More

A proposal to drill for oil in the Everglades was attacked by politicians and environmentalists Tuesday, as they urged Gov. Ron DeSantis to step in and stop it. At a news conference at Everglades Holiday Park in southwest Broward County, a parade of speakers denounced the proposal by Kanter Real Estate LLC for an exploratory well a few miles west of Miramar. Speaking over the occasional drone of airboats, they called on the governor to tell the Florida Department of Environmental Protection... Read More

A report examining the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High has unfairly allowed three assistant principals to be portrayed as incompetent cowards, their lawyer says. Jeff Morford, Denise Reed and Winfred Porter were reassigned from their assistant principal jobs in November as the result of a scathing report from the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Public Safety Commission that criticized their actions before and during the shooting that killed 17 people. The three administrators are now... Read More

Nearly four years in the making, Bo’s Beach restaurant has finally opened on city-owned land across from Fort Lauderdale beach at the former site of Oasis Cafe. Bo’s Beach, from ex-Dolphin Kim Bokamper’s restaurant group, quietly opened last weekend at 600 Seabreeze Boulevard, a heavily-trafficked tourist corridor. The restaurant will specialize in tropical cuisine, seafood and wood-fired pizza. It will be a departure from the Bokamper’s Sports Bar & Grill chain that PDKN... Read More

The attorney for suspended Broward Sheriff Scott Israel asked the state Tuesday to limit “emotional evidence” at the upcoming trial where he’ll seek to win back his job following last month’s suspension by Gov. Ron DeSantis over the sheriff’s handling of the mass shooting in Parkland. At a 20-minute procedural hearing at the Florida Capitol, attorney Benedict (Ben) Kuehne said: “I’m hopeful that this proceeding will focus on the allegations and the facts as opposed to the... Read More

If Congress or the Supreme Court kills the Affordable Care Act, one of the act’s key provisions — that people with pre-existing conditions have access to health insurance — could be preserved for Florida consumers under a bill advanced by a state Senate committee Tuesday. How beneficial that access would be without cost controls is not yet known. On the national level, Republicans have been trying to repeal or gut protections in the ACA, know as Obamacare, since it was enacted by... Read More

Jim Tucker reckons the concrete-hulled boat in Santa Rosa Sound where he spends his days has about 1,000 years before it crumbles into dust, settling into a mushy pile at the bottom of wherever it might be moored. However long the boat lasts, when it does go down, Tucker will go down with it. He plans to be laid to his eternal rest in the bow of the now nearly century-old vessel, probably in a body bag encased in fiberglass inside a sealed concrete vault. “One of the questions you... Read More