Free Republic

Deputies in Florida found a live grenade in the truck of an “idiot” who was driving with a terrifying clown mannequin in the passenger seat, wild video shows. The footage released Monday by the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office shows the moment a deputy stumbled upon the explosive find after Louis Branson, 65, was pulled over in Bunnell for expired tags on his Dodge pickup. “Oh shoot, is this for real?” a deputy asks her partners after discovering the grenade inside a sealed canister in the back of Branson’s ride, video shows. “Get out of the truck, it looked like a...

Branson told deputies he found the grenade three or four years ago while cleaning out a veteran’s home and decided to keep it. He was unsure whether it was active, said Flagler County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Melissa Morreale. “He thought it was cool, so he kept it in his toolbox and was driving around with a grenade for quite some time,” Morreale told The Post. Along with the grenade, deputies found the life-size clown mannequin — as well as amounts of cocaine, marijuana and two pipes with suspected drug residue.

Despite the county-wide lifting of a mask mandate, including in government buildings, the director of a Florida health department threatened to call the police when a mother refused to put on a mask. On Oct. 6, Casey Goff—a Flagler Beach resident and mother of four—went to the Flagler County Health Department with her 3-year-old daughter to apply for a religious exemption. The effort was part of a proactive measure to opt out of any future efforts by the Flagler County School Board (FCSB) to impose mask mandates on her children. “I walked in and a lady offered me a mask,”...

Authorities say a Florida man fired shots at two late-night “Pokémon Gō” players in a car outside his house but no one was injured. Flagler County Sheriff’s Office spokesman James Troiano says in a news release that the homeowner awoke to a noise outside about 1:30 a.m. Saturday and saw a car sitting in the road in front of his house. He told authorities he got a handgun and approached the vehicle. …