A combination of hubris (failing to heed the stern warnings that bidders should only participate if they know what they're doing), cryptic annotations and confusing illustrations resulted in a bidder buying a 12" wide, 100' long strip between two properties in Broward County, Florida -- an odd parcel that had been formerly owned by the developer, who folded and stopped paying tax on it, sending it to the auction. Read the rest

Rot in jail for cruelty to animals, Florida man.

QCountry 103.7:

A 25-year-old Florida man is jailed in upstate New York after police say he crashed a stolen car and was found naked in a chicken coop after a seven-hour manhunt.

Kirkwood is 57 miles southeast of Ithaca.

State police say John Mehne of Sarasota faces numerous charges, including criminal possession of stolen property for crashing an Audi A5 reported stolen in Florida and cruelty to animals for killing a dog and some chickens.

Police say Mehne crashed the Audi on Interstate 81 about three miles north of the Pennsylvania line Tuesday morning, rode a passing pickup truck for a mile and ran into woods. Police say he stopped at several homes, killing a dog at one and attacking chickens at two others.

He was arraigned Wednesday and jailed without bail. Police say he has requested a lawyer.

Vasile Savu is accused of walking into a Western Union in Hollywood, Florida and asking the clerk to print out his flight itinerary, a pretense he used to get the clerk to insert a thumb-drive loaded with malicious software into his computers, which allegedly allowed Savu to steal $32k from the business. Read the rest

Florida Man is the inaugural kickstarter from Los Angeles's incomparable comics store Secret Headquarters (previously): it challenges players to fill in the blanks from hundreds of cards capturing actual headlines about actual Floridians, creating hilarious, Cards Against Humanity-style madlibs. $20 gets you a game (early bird, rising to $25), $50 gets you a game and expansion pack, and there are tiers with tons of swag and of course a retailer bulk-discount pack. Read the rest

Having served a whopping 16 days in office, Florida's Republican (shocker) Secretary of State Mike Ertel has resigned after the Tallahassee Democrat newspaper obtained photos of Ertel in blackface, dressed as a Hurricane Katrina survivor. Read the rest

For framing innocent black men, a police chief in Florida will go to prison for three years. Impunity is the norm in America for cases like this, so the conviction is a big deal. Read the rest

The U.S. Justice Department told reporters today that a man in South Florida is in custody in connection with mailing of pipe bombs to political opponents of Donald Trump. Read the rest

Sometimes people steal cars to pay for that sweet lady H, but this fella allegedly stole a car, possibly to keep the monkey on his back in diapers. Read the rest

Richard Salamon, the city planner for Sunrise, Florida, apparently got so nasty after a bundt cake store wouldn't honor his expired coupon that his job is up for review with city commissioners. Read the rest

No matter how shitty a day I've had, I can always count on Florida Man to cheer me up or at the very least, horrify me to the point that my personal problems feel like minor issues.

In this episode, we find Florida Man educating the young in the miracle of human reproduction. Unfortunately, not everyone present for Florida Man's lecture enjoyed what he had to say, or how he said it.

From BuzzFeed:

A Florida man was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct after climbing on top of a playground full of children and yelling about where babies come from.

A police officer said Otis Dawayne Ryan, 30, climbed to the top of the playground equipment at a park in Clearwater on Sunday afternoon and began shouting at the children, telling them "babies come out of women," according to court documents.

"He then yelled, 'They come out of their pussies,'" the officer wrote in an arrest affidavit. "At that time parents were rushing to the area to remove their children."

I suppose I can see their point.

This wasn't Mr. Ryan's first brush with the law. Hell, it wasn't even his first brush with the law of the day. According to the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office, before holding his sex education class on top of the jungle gym, Ryan spent his morning yelling at tourists  and making lewd comments to any women who happened to pass by.

Despite what a class act he is, the cops were only able to ding Ryan with one count of disorderly conduct, which carries a fine of $118. Read the rest

Baffling. Boggling. Florida.

This story has everything from a hitman named 'the Rabbi' to a child pornographer asking his mom to arrange a murder.

Via People:

A Florida man who had pleaded guilty to child pornography now faces additional charges in a suspected murder-for-hire plot to kill the presiding judge in his case, PEOPLE confirms.

To arrange the hit, Robert Anthony O’Hare allegedly used codes while talking to his mother on recorded jailhouse phone calls in Lake County, Florida, according to court documents obtained by PEOPLE.

On Jan. 7, O’Hare allegedly gave his mom a message that said “Kill Briggs.” Investigators believe this was a reference to Judge Don F. Briggs.

Authorities claim that O’Hare asked his mother to write the message down and give it to a friend called “the rabbi.” In the call, O’Hare allegedly told his mother that the rabbi would know what to do.

“As far as the weird scale goes, it’s off the charts, totally,” Lt. John Herrell with the Lake County Sheriff’s Office told local TV station WKMG.

On a subsequent call, O’Hare’s mother allegedly said that she had spoken to the rabbi. “He knows what you want, but he can’t do it.” she said, the court records claim. “He’s just a ‘rabbi.’ ”

In an emergency situation, it's important to get life-saving information out to the people. Deaf residents of Manatee County, Florida may not have received this message clearly, as a man with limited sign language skills was put in front of the camera to translate a televised briefing about Hurricane Irma.

To show just how embarrassingly bad the translation really was, YouTuber Jane Smith added captions to the briefing.

As an example, "We need you to be safe," became "Need be bear monster" to this under-qualified interpreter.

One YouTube commenter defended the man, writing:

ma'am he was not impersonating an interpreter. I personally know him and he is not an interpreter nor does he claim to be. His brother is Deaf. He works for the county as marine rescue. THE county are the ones who are to blame not this man. For the record his superiors asked him to, and he told them that he was not an interpreter and did not want to, but he was coerced into doing it anyways. Yes, it was a serious mistake, but please direct your outrage appropriately and don't just make assumptions about someone's motives without knowing anything about them please...

Poor guy, he really gave it his best shot.

(Holy Kaw!) Read the rest

Orlando News 6 reports that a Florida man shot a cat that shat in his yard, telling officers it "looked at him like he owned the place". The cat was paralyzed and had to be killed, reports Loren Korn.

"It was just a poor judgment call," the man, who declined to share his name, said of his decision to shoot. He said he didn't know it was someone's pet but admitted to shooting at cats before, never hitting one.

"It was not my intention to hurt that cat. All I wanted to do was get it out in front of my walkway, stop pooping. For the flies and the smell is just horrendous," he said

The man said he has several health issues and is on disability. He hopes to be only punished with a fine instead of a felony, fearing he might lose his income if charged.

"I'll be homeless. Might be a death sentence for accidentally shooting some cat," he said.

Isn't "fantasizing about being the real victim" the center square on Florida Man Bingo? Read the rest

On Monday night, 19 year old Austin Kelly Harrouff of Florida went homicidally berserk for reasons yet unknown. He stabbed to death a random couple twice his age, also attacking a neighbor who tried to intervene. Then Austin began biting the dead man's face off.

Horrible new details are out today. When Austin's frightened mom called 911 to report his erratic, menacing behavior with family, she told the emergency dispatcher that her son was wearing a Donald Trump “Make America Great Again” hat when he wandered off into the night ranting about being a superhero. And in a YouTube video uploaded before the attack, he spoke to the camera about bodybuilding and steroids, and of taking “a lot of shrooms.”

A person familiar with the family gave reporters two snapchats Austin sent out hours before the attack. The snapchats show him making faces for the camera with the words "Trump" and "the horse" captioning the images. Read the rest

We don't know what may have caused a young Florida man to commit a gruesome attack late Monday night. We do know how the victims died. It was gruesome. The details that follow may be disturbing. Read the rest

A man in Florida was cited by state wildlife officers for killing an alligator without a permit after an inspection revealed gator body parts in his pickup truck, and the poor dead critter's foot sticking out of the dashboard. Read the rest