Where to drop off your mail-in ballots on Election Day Those who still have their mail-in ballots in Southwest Florida have two options on Election Day: vote in person or drop them off at a specified location.
WINK NEWS Lee County race for Sheriff It is now Election Day, and two candidates for the Lee County Sheriff are vying for the position.
WINK NEWS Floridians to vote on legalizing recreational marijuana With Election Day in full swing, WINK News is monitoring the results of the most controversial amendments on the ballot, including Florida’s Amendment 3.
Know where your voting precinct is in Southwest Florida Election Day is only one day away, so it is important to know where to go and if you qualify to vote in Southwest Florida.
WINK NEWS How Floridians are voting on Consitutional right to abortions As Election Day ramps up, WINK News is monitoring the results of the most controversial amendments on the ballot, including Florida’s Amendment 4.
Collier County commission race As the 2024 general election gets underway, WINK News is monitoring the election results in several local races, including the Collier County Commission race.
Cape Coral 5 seats in Cape Coral City Council to be decided on Election Day The Cape Coral City Council election will be decided on Tuesday. Five seats are up for grabs.
FORT MYERS Fort Myers City Council race for 2 wards The 2024 elections are looking to be a tense battle that will have every American on the edge of their seats. In Southwest Florida, the feeling is no different.
Lee County Superintendent election; School Board District 7 Voters in Lee County are going to the polls to fill some crucial seats in the school district.
PUNTA GORDA The race for Punta Gorda City Council November 5 is election day, as politicians across the country compete for office, with Southwest Florida being no different.
Lee County commission race for districts 3 and 5 The 2024 elections include several local Southwest Florida races, among them are races for two districts on the Lee County Board of County Commissioners.
Election Day crowds expected despite record early voting Election Day is nearly upon us. At 7 p.m. on Tuesday, the polls will be closed, and our team will bring you the results.
DOWNTOWN FORT MYERS Voters in Downtown Fort Myers ready for 2024 Election A lot can change in four years. During the 2020 election, many voters masked up as they cast their ballots, and the pandemic was at the top of many voters’ minds.
PUNTA GORDA Punta Gorda residents frustrated by hurricane debris delays Many people in parts of southwest Florida feel like they’ve dealt with more than their fair share of storm damage lately.
Miracle Moment: A rosy outlook following surprise diagnosis It’s time for Miracle Moment. Today, we meet a toddler diagnosed with a disease without known prevention or cure.
Where to drop off your mail-in ballots on Election Day Those who still have their mail-in ballots in Southwest Florida have two options on Election Day: vote in person or drop them off at a specified location.
WINK NEWS Lee County race for Sheriff It is now Election Day, and two candidates for the Lee County Sheriff are vying for the position.
WINK NEWS Floridians to vote on legalizing recreational marijuana With Election Day in full swing, WINK News is monitoring the results of the most controversial amendments on the ballot, including Florida’s Amendment 3.
Know where your voting precinct is in Southwest Florida Election Day is only one day away, so it is important to know where to go and if you qualify to vote in Southwest Florida.
WINK NEWS How Floridians are voting on Consitutional right to abortions As Election Day ramps up, WINK News is monitoring the results of the most controversial amendments on the ballot, including Florida’s Amendment 4.
Collier County commission race As the 2024 general election gets underway, WINK News is monitoring the election results in several local races, including the Collier County Commission race.
Cape Coral 5 seats in Cape Coral City Council to be decided on Election Day The Cape Coral City Council election will be decided on Tuesday. Five seats are up for grabs.
FORT MYERS Fort Myers City Council race for 2 wards The 2024 elections are looking to be a tense battle that will have every American on the edge of their seats. In Southwest Florida, the feeling is no different.
Lee County Superintendent election; School Board District 7 Voters in Lee County are going to the polls to fill some crucial seats in the school district.
PUNTA GORDA The race for Punta Gorda City Council November 5 is election day, as politicians across the country compete for office, with Southwest Florida being no different.
Lee County commission race for districts 3 and 5 The 2024 elections include several local Southwest Florida races, among them are races for two districts on the Lee County Board of County Commissioners.
Election Day crowds expected despite record early voting Election Day is nearly upon us. At 7 p.m. on Tuesday, the polls will be closed, and our team will bring you the results.
DOWNTOWN FORT MYERS Voters in Downtown Fort Myers ready for 2024 Election A lot can change in four years. During the 2020 election, many voters masked up as they cast their ballots, and the pandemic was at the top of many voters’ minds.
PUNTA GORDA Punta Gorda residents frustrated by hurricane debris delays Many people in parts of southwest Florida feel like they’ve dealt with more than their fair share of storm damage lately.
Miracle Moment: A rosy outlook following surprise diagnosis It’s time for Miracle Moment. Today, we meet a toddler diagnosed with a disease without known prevention or cure.
FILE – A memorial to the victims is seen outside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., during the one-year anniversary of the school shooting, Thursday, Feb. 14, 2019. The three-story building in the background is where the massacre happened. Jurors in the trial of Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz walked through the still blood-spattered rooms of the high school Thursday, Aug. 4, 2022, in a visit to the three-story building where he murdered 14 students and three staff members four years ago. (Al Diaz/Miami Herald via AP, File) The 2018 Parkland high school massacre will be reenacted twice with the firing of about 140 blanks on campus as part of families’ lawsuits against the former sheriff’s deputy they accuse of failing to stop the gunman, a judge ruled Wednesday. Circuit Judge Carol-Lisa Phillips granted the motion from attorney David Brill, who says his video-recorded reenactment will prove former Broward Deputy Scot Peterson knew the shooter was firing inside a three-story classroom building at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14, 2018, but chose not to intercede. Phillips also granted the request by Peterson’s attorney, Michael Piper, who questioned the validity of such reenactments but said his side would also now need to conduct one. Peterson, the school’s on-campus deputy, was acquitted last month of criminal charges accusing him of inaction, but the civil case against him, the Broward Sheriff’s Office and others is governed by different laws and rules of evidence. It also has a lower standard of proof. The judge made it clear that she was not ruling on whether she will allow the reenactments to be played for the jury at the trial, which has not been scheduled. “That’s for another day,” Phillips said of that decision. She will have to review the reenactments’ recordings and hear arguments on whether they accurately reflect what Peterson heard. Families of the 17 killed and 26 injured are seeking unspecified damages in lawsuits that are being tried jointly. The judge ordered that the reenactments be conducted before the school’s summer break ends next month and that nearby residents be given sufficient warning. She wants them done on the same or consecutive days. The reenactments would be based on school surveillance videos of the massacre that show second-by-second the actions and locations of Peterson and shooter Nikolas Cruz during the six-minute attack. Reenactors playing Cruz would fire nearly 140 blanks from guns identical to the AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle he used from the same spots on each floor. The school’s fire alarms would sound at the same moments they did during the shooting. Meanwhile, reenactors playing Peterson and wearing a recording device would duplicate his actions as he rode on a golf cart from his office about 100 yards from the classroom building. Peterson was dropped off about 10 yards from the building about two minutes after the shooting began. Peterson went toward a door and drew his handgun but then backed away, taking cover next to a neighboring building. He remained there for 40 minutes, long after the shooting ended and other law enforcement officers went inside, making radio calls to dispatchers and other deputies. The families and injured insist he could have gone inside and shot Cruz or at least distracted him, saving the six killed and four wounded after he arrived at the building. Peterson, 60, insists that echoes prevented him from pinpointing where the shots were coming from and that he would have charged inside if he had known Cruz’s location. He retired shortly after the shooting but was then retroactively fired. Brill told the judge he wants to reenact the shooting because “we don’t want to leave anything to chance and allow Peterson to escape justice in this civil case like he did in the criminal one.” He said the reenactment will provide “similarly sufficient evidence” that Peterson knew shots were coming from the building, meaning he should have looked through the door — something Brill believes he did but has lied about. “He could hear the cacophony of the gun discharge of a …. rifle that was about 50 yards from his position,” Brill said. Peterson, if he looked, would have seen “deceased people, blood, the shooter, the shooter’s jacket that he threw on the floor.” Piper said he doesn’t believe the reenactments will accurately depict what Peterson heard. He said blanks don’t sound exactly like bullets and it is impossible to accurately recreate the direction and angle of Cruz’s gun. There were also hundreds of people in the building, others in the area and cars in the parking lot that would muffle and deflect sounds. “It is going to be impossible for this to be reliable … evidence,” Piper said. “There are so many variables that cannot be accounted for.” He said the best evidence will be witness testimony about what they heard. Some witnesses at Peterson’s criminal trial testified they knew where the shots were coming from, while others said they were unsure or incorrect about the shooter’s location. It is unclear whether the reenactments will delay the school district’s plan to demolish the classroom building, which has been locked behind a chain-link barrier as evidence in the Cruz and Peterson criminal cases while the rest of the campus reopened to students in 2018. The jury in Cruz’s penalty trial last year toured the building, but the judge in Peterson’s trial rejected a prosecution motion to have his jury do the same. Victims’ families, the wounded and teachers have been given the opportunity over the last week to tour the building, if they chose. Cruz, 24 and a former Stoneman Douglas student, received a life sentence last year after his jury could not unanimously agree that he deserved the death penalty.