Category: Broward News

After a tourist boat exploded beneath Stefanie Schaffer’s seat, mangling her legs, she lay in a hospital bed wondering whether she would ever walk again. But before she surrendered to despair, her doctors unknowingly inspired her. “Every day when the trauma team would do their rounds, I would hear them outside my door,” said Schaffer, 22, about her stay at Broward Health Medical Center in Fort Lauderdale. “And they’d say, ‘The girl in this room is a miracle.’ And it just made... Read More

The Florida Trust for Historic Preservation announced Thursday its intent to take over the historic Bonnet House, kicking off a fight for control of the beachfront, community treasure. The 35-acre estate, spanning from the Intracoastal Waterway to the Atlantic Ocean, offers visitors a slice of what life was like before developers reshaped the Fort Lauderdale shoreline. Swans float in the pond and monkeys play in the tree limbs outside the 1920s Bonnet House, and orchids beautify the natural... Read More

A year and a half before the Stoneman Douglas massacre, some of the shooter’s teachers were surveyed about his behavior. They wrote that he made threats. He was fascinated with guns. They were afraid of him. Nikolas Cruz told an administrator that shooting guns helped him relieve stress. And when the school district judged whether he might harm other students, he met all of the criteria for aggression and depression. Those observations, however, were never relayed to police or to mental... Read More

Arnold Abbott, the soft-spoken lifelong activist, has died — five years after he drew international attention for feeding the homeless despite threats he’d be jailed. Abbott, of Fort Lauderdale, died Friday at age 94, according to his caretaker and his attorney. Abbott began feeding the homeless on Fort Lauderdale’s beach in 1991, although it was illegal to provide such a social service on the beach. Years later, the city demanded he stop, but he refused, saying he and his corps of... Read More

As Miami-area officials prepare to host the 2020 Super Bowl the high-profile bust of New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, charged with soliciting prostitution as part of a widespread sex-trafficking … Click to Continue » ... Read More

The winds of Hurricane Irma may have swept away Brad McBride’s fence more than a year ago, but another kind of storm is now brewing. At the center of the controversy is a horse barn whose fate is wrapped up in a not-so-neighborly feud between McBride and Southwest Ranches, a small town at the edge of the Everglades. The fight, already getting nasty, looks to be heading for a showdown in court. All the trouble began when McBride tried to replace his hurricane-damaged fence, he says. To get... Read More

For 20 years, outgoing AutoNation chairman, president and CEO Mike Jackson has been one of the most outspoken corporate leaders in America. He has famously called for a gas tax … Click to Continue » ... Read More

Legal immigrants in South Florida will soon be able to get real-time answers about their applications without having to wait for an appointment. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) … Click to Continue » ... Read More

Puerto Rico’s governor was no friend of Rick Scott’s during the 2018 campaign, even as Scott visited the territory eight times and pitched himself as Puerto Rico’s de facto senator … Click to Continue » ... Read More

A night out at a pub in a KMart shopping plaza in the Florida Keys ended with three men in jail after accusations of a punch thrown over a woman, rocks shattering a windshield and a man trying to mow down two others with his car, deputies said Friday. William Cobaugh, 49, told the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office he pre-emptively punched Nicholas Michael Jones, 22, in the face at the Brass Monkey bar early Friday in Marathon because Jones was acting aggressively and “had that look in... Read More