NAPLES Increasing amount of homeless seniors in SWFL Saint Matthew House told Wink News that 20% of the people they shelter are over 60 years old.
NAPLES Man suspected of threatening pickelballers with machete A man has been arrested after authorities say he chased a group of pickleball players off a Naples court. “I don’t know. It just seemed like he snapped,” said William Nehrkorn, father of one of the pickleball players. 53-year-old Pelican Marsh maintenance worker Joseph Devalle ran toward Nehrkorn’s son and friends, not with a paddle […]
NAPLES Turtle Club in Naples reopens Following a 19-month closure because of Hurricane Ian, the Turtle Club has reopened.
FORT MYERS BEACH Hurricane season preparations at Lee County construction sites Many already know the drill when hurricane season is around the corner.
SANIBEL Bones found on Sanibel concern beachgoers A husband and wife found what appeared to be bones. What type and where they came from is being investigated.
FGCU FGCU president reflects on first year with graduating class Alico Arena was packed this weekend as Florida Gulf Coast University graduated 1,900 students in four ceremonies.
Reverse shoulder replacement offers new approach to pain management Shoulder replacement is the third most common replacement in the US, following hip and knee replacement.
SOUTHWEST FLORIDA Lee County teachers bargain for new raises Kevin Daly is the voice of the Lee County Teachers Union, and he says he knows firsthand the struggle teachers experience across the state.
FORT MYERS New Starbucks off Colonial expected to add to traffic headaches It’s a venti-sized traffic nightmare. That’s how Gina O’Donnell envisions the future of this plaza.
NAPLES Feeding families through Meals of Hope They’re a Naples-based non-profit organization whose mission is to alleviate hunger both locally and throughout the country.
Family dealing with two losses in quick succession A teenager will not get to celebrate turning 21 years old with friends, can’t put a smile on his family member’s faces and will never get to see his mother again.
JERUSALEM (AP) Israeli leaders have approved a military operation into the Gaza Strip city of Rafah Israeli leaders approved a military operation into the Gaza Strip city of Rafah, and Israeli forces were striking targets in the area, officials announced Monday, hours after Hamas announced it had accepted an Egyptian-Qatari cease-fire proposal.
FORT MYERS Middle school tech worker uses CPR skills to save pickleball player’s life It was the right place, at the right time, and that right place was near the pickleball court.
EVERGLADES Big Sugar’s lawsuit for control over Lake Okeechobee water A local non-profit is calling one lawsuit a battle for who controls the water in the State of Florida. Three major sugar companies filed a lawsuit in 2021 against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers over the design and intended use of the Everglades Agriculture Area (EAA) Reservoir.
NAPLES Annual Holocaust Remembrance Day program returns to Jewish Federation of Greater Naples Sunday was a day to remember the six million men, women and children lost in the Holocaust.
NAPLES Increasing amount of homeless seniors in SWFL Saint Matthew House told Wink News that 20% of the people they shelter are over 60 years old.
NAPLES Man suspected of threatening pickelballers with machete A man has been arrested after authorities say he chased a group of pickleball players off a Naples court. “I don’t know. It just seemed like he snapped,” said William Nehrkorn, father of one of the pickleball players. 53-year-old Pelican Marsh maintenance worker Joseph Devalle ran toward Nehrkorn’s son and friends, not with a paddle […]
NAPLES Turtle Club in Naples reopens Following a 19-month closure because of Hurricane Ian, the Turtle Club has reopened.
FORT MYERS BEACH Hurricane season preparations at Lee County construction sites Many already know the drill when hurricane season is around the corner.
SANIBEL Bones found on Sanibel concern beachgoers A husband and wife found what appeared to be bones. What type and where they came from is being investigated.
FGCU FGCU president reflects on first year with graduating class Alico Arena was packed this weekend as Florida Gulf Coast University graduated 1,900 students in four ceremonies.
Reverse shoulder replacement offers new approach to pain management Shoulder replacement is the third most common replacement in the US, following hip and knee replacement.
SOUTHWEST FLORIDA Lee County teachers bargain for new raises Kevin Daly is the voice of the Lee County Teachers Union, and he says he knows firsthand the struggle teachers experience across the state.
FORT MYERS New Starbucks off Colonial expected to add to traffic headaches It’s a venti-sized traffic nightmare. That’s how Gina O’Donnell envisions the future of this plaza.
NAPLES Feeding families through Meals of Hope They’re a Naples-based non-profit organization whose mission is to alleviate hunger both locally and throughout the country.
Family dealing with two losses in quick succession A teenager will not get to celebrate turning 21 years old with friends, can’t put a smile on his family member’s faces and will never get to see his mother again.
JERUSALEM (AP) Israeli leaders have approved a military operation into the Gaza Strip city of Rafah Israeli leaders approved a military operation into the Gaza Strip city of Rafah, and Israeli forces were striking targets in the area, officials announced Monday, hours after Hamas announced it had accepted an Egyptian-Qatari cease-fire proposal.
FORT MYERS Middle school tech worker uses CPR skills to save pickleball player’s life It was the right place, at the right time, and that right place was near the pickleball court.
EVERGLADES Big Sugar’s lawsuit for control over Lake Okeechobee water A local non-profit is calling one lawsuit a battle for who controls the water in the State of Florida. Three major sugar companies filed a lawsuit in 2021 against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers over the design and intended use of the Everglades Agriculture Area (EAA) Reservoir.
NAPLES Annual Holocaust Remembrance Day program returns to Jewish Federation of Greater Naples Sunday was a day to remember the six million men, women and children lost in the Holocaust.
HOUSTON (AP) — Shannon J. Miles is charged with fatally shooting a suburban Houston sheriff’s deputy in an attack the sheriff said was possibly fueled by rising tensions linked to the Black Lives Matter movement. A guide to key aspects of the case: ___ THE SLAYING Deputy Darren Goforth, 47, a Harris County deputy for 10 years, was filling his patrol car Friday evening at a gas station in Cypress, a suburb northwest of Houston, when he was gunned down. Miles, who is black, allegedly walked up to the white deputy from behind and shot him 15 times, including in the head and back after he had fallen from the initial shots. Miles was arrested Saturday based on witness descriptions and surveillance video of his pickup truck, which was found outside his mother’s home a few blocks from the shooting scene. Ballistic tests showed that a handgun recovered from the home matched the weapon used to attack Goforth, District Attorney Devon Anderson said. The 30-year-old Miles has a lengthy criminal record going back to 2005, with offenses including criminal mischief, resisting arrest and disorderly conduct with a firearm. His maximum sentence was 15 days in jail. Miles also spent time in a mental hospital following a 2012 arrest. He was found to be mentally incompetent after being charged in 2012 with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, according to Joe Frederick, a prosecutor in Travis County, which includes Austin. He was declared competent in February 2013, but the charge was dropped because the victim could not be located, Frederick said. Anthony Osso, one of Miles’ court-appointed attorneys, said his client intends to plead not guilty. “He had indicated to the investigating officers that he was not involved in the case,” Osso told The Associated Press Monday in a phone interview after Miles appeared briefly in court. “What I want to do is investigate the case and defend my client based on the facts of the case and not opinion in the public eye or rhetoric that’s espoused on social media,” Osso said. ___ THE TARGETING Sheriff Ron Hickman said the attack was unprovoked and suggested that the shooting could be connected to the Black Lives Matter movement. “We’ve heard black lives matter, all lives matter. Well, cops’ lives matter, too,” Hickman said. He added that a “dangerous national rhetoric that is out there today … has gotten out of control.” No physical evidence has yet surfaced to support the idea that the shooting was in any way related to the protest movement. But other law-enforcement leaders did not hesitate to draw the correlation. “There’s no doubt in my mind that Deputy Goforth was murdered because of the color he wore, because he was blue, because he was an officer,” Joe Gamaldi, a vice president of the Houston Police Officers’ Union, said Monday. Roland De Los Santos, a Houston police officer, said the death of Goforth, his friend for 40 years, was “a direct result of things that are being said.” DeRay McKesson, a St. Louis-based leader of Black Lives Matter, said in a social-media posting that it was “sad that some have chosen to politicize this tragedy by falsely attributing the officer’s death to a movement seeking to end violence.” There was no immediate response to an email from The Associated Press to a contact listed on the Black Lives Matter website. Bob Goerlitz, president of the Harris County Deputies’ Organization, declined to speculate Monday about the motive of the suspected gunman. “I don’t get into that,” Goerlitz said. “Who knows what was motivating him? All we know is our brother’s gone.” The district attorney also declined to comment on a motive. ___ VIOLENCE AGAINST OFFICERS Goforth was the sixth officer in the nation shot and killed in August, according to the nonprofit National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, which tracks on-duty officer deaths. Of the 84 on-duty deaths so far in 2015, 25 were firearms-related, down from 30 at this time in 2014. Traffic accidents account for the largest number of officer deaths, at 38. Last December, two New York City patrolmen, partners Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu, were gunned down as they sat in their patrol car. The gunman, Ismaaily Brinsley, ran into a subway station and killed himself. Before the ambush, Brinsley posted on an Instagram account that he was planning to shoot two “pigs” in retaliation for Eric Garner’s death in an apparent police chokehold. Garner had refused to be handcuffed after being stopped on suspicion of selling loose, untaxed cigarettes on a Staten Island street. In March, two police officers were shot and wounded in Ferguson, Missouri, the scene of violent protests over a police shooting of Michael Brown a year ago. Jeffrey L. Williams was charged in the shooting. His attorney has denied that Williams targeted police as a demonstration was breaking up. A study for the International Association of Chiefs of Police showed that from 1990 to 2012 the number of ambushes accounting for officer slayings grew from about 12 percent from 1990 to 2000 to 21 percent from 2001 to 2012. During that period, 1,219 law enforcement officers were slain, according to the study. ___ BLACK LIVES MATTER The nationwide Black Lives Matter movement traces its beginnings to the Trayvon Martin case in Sanford, Florida, where the 17-year-old black teenager was shot and killed by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch coordinator. The movement grew after 18-year-old Michael Brown, also black, was shot and killed by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. Protesters cited the movement earlier this summer in Texas, after a 28-year-old black woman named Sandra Bland was found dead in a county jail about 50 miles northwest of Houston. She had been arrested three days earlier on a traffic violation. Texas authorities said she committed suicide, but her Chicago-area family is skeptical of that. The case remains under investigation.