Free Republic

TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — A Florida man was arrested and accused of using an excavator to crush a woman’s truck after she failed to find enough money to buy drugs, authorities said. According to the Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office, 36-year-old Richard Hamilton, of Englewood, was “laughing hysterically” as he used the bucket of an excavator to smash the woman’s Chevrolet Silverado pick-up truck on Sunday. Deputies said the incident began on Saturday night when Hamilton drove the woman to several gas stations around town — all while demanding she find money for drugs. Hamilton became “increasingly agitated” after the woman...

ENGLEWOOD, Fla. (WFLA) — A Florida man was arrested Tuesday for using a sledgehammer to steal over $800 from a laundromat. The Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office said around 10:45 on May 8 Michael Justin Rowe, 32, and Taylor Marie Farrell, 34, went into a laundromat. Pictures show Rowe was wearing an ape mask and holding a sledgehammer. Rowe used the sledgehammer to smash a coin change machine, taking about $800 from it, deputies said. Meanwhile in video not released by the sheriff’s office, Farrell can be heard yelling “We got to go. You’ve been in here too long,” to Rowe...

The worst of Hurricane Michael’s remnants were supposed to track south of tiny Charlotte County in southern Virginia, but a desperate 911 call Thursday night told a different story: A car had been washed away in a torrential flash flood. When sheriff’s deputies raced to the scene on Mount Harmony Road after 11 p.m., county administrator Daniel Witt said they heard the screams of a 17-year-old boy clinging to a guardrail. The sheriff’s deputies and some bystanders linked arms and waded into the raging water, before tossing the teen a rope. He was pulled to safety, but his father and...

A Virginia school district says that a Bible verse engraved on bench memorializing a deceased student must be removed because it is not legal. Charlotte County School Superintendent Nancy Leonard said that the school board determined that the engraving on the bench was illegal because it violated the U.S. Constitution’s Establishment Clause, which states that the government cannot “establish” a state-sponsored religion. “We found that the memorial bench that we currently have is not legally compliant because of the Establishment Clause (in Constitution), because of the Bible verse,” Leonard told WAFF. The verse from Philippians 4:13 says, “I can do...

One of the areas where the country may have lost ground in the last election is in the area of eminent domain. There seems to be wide agreement across political lines that the Kelo vs. New London decision, which gave local governments virtually unlimited power to usurp private property and turn it over to other, favored, private interests, was unwise and unjust. Only the far left, unfortunately represented by Supreme Court Justices Stevens, Breyer, Ginsburg, and Souter (and in this case, Kennedy) are in favor of granting this power to government. With a Democrat majority in the Senate now, all...