Southwest Florida Crime Stoppers are looking for a suspect in a Wednesday night robbery in North Fort Myers.

The man pictured entered the Dollar General at 141 Pondella Road at around 10:52 p.m. wearing a mask and holding a sharp object in hand, demanding money before running away with an undisclosed amount of cash. The suspect is described as a 5’10” Black man of medium build.

If anyone has any information that will help identify the suspect, please call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-780-8477 or submit an anonymous tip online. You can receive a cash reward of up to $3,000.

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OK, procrastinators: If you’re planning on squeezing in some last-minute shopping today, the malls will certainly be busy, but not as much as in past years.

Many stores close early on Christmas Eve, so make sure you double-check the hours before you head out. Some last-minute shoppers who offered their own advice agreed: the earlier, the better.

“Hurry up and get in here, because the aisles are looking pretty empty in there,” said Randy Olscamp of Fort Myers.

Olscamp says most of the presents he ordered online are facing shipping delays and won’t make it on time, so he went to Target to buy some last-minute gifts. But he went Wednesday, to avoid the long lines he expects Christmas Eve.

“It’s frustrating, but I understand, because people didn’t get to travel this year, so I think people shipped a lot more stuff through the mail this year, since grandparents didn’t get to see their kids this much,” Olscamp said.

Eileen Casey of Fort Myers says it’s always better to go as soon as the store opens. It helps you avoid the crowds and longer checkout lines.

“If I don’t have my list then forget it, so I make a list and strategize where I’m gonna be going, so the nice thing about here is they have everything all in one store, so there’s not much running around,” Casey said. “But without a list, I’d be in there all day and come out with not what I was supposed to be getting.”

At Gulf Coast Town Center, stores are open Thursday morning, but according to its website, they are all closed on Christmas.

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Excedrin has recalled over 430,000 bottles of painkillers due to manufacturing issues that may have left holes in the bottom of some of the bottles, posing a health risk to children.

“This recall involves 50, 80, 100, 125, 200, 250 and 300-count bottles of Excedrin Migraine Caplets, Excedrin Migraine Geltabs, Excedrin Extra Strength Caplets, Excedrin PM Headache Caplets, and Excedrin Tension Headache Caplets,” according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. A full list of products is available on Excedrin’s website.

Excedrin bottles without holes can be kept and used as directed. Those with holes, however, can be returned to GlaxoSmithKline for a full refund. The company issued a “stop sale” alert in October, but only now upgraded that to a full recall.

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This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without prior written consent.

First responders in Southwest Florida are beginning to get protection from the coronavirus. Getting the vaccine is personal for many first responders in the region.

Naples Fire Chief Pete DiMaria says he plans to get the COVID-19 vaccine as soon as he can, especially after Naples Firefighter Tony Christenson died of COVID-19 in August.

“We want to get to a point where we don’t have to worry about losing anymore loved ones or our brothers and sisters in the fire service,” DiMaria said. “But, really, you don’t want to lose anymore members of our community as well.”

Deaths like Christensen’s due to COVID-19 were a difficult reality many stations nationwide also faced, as each day fire-rescue crews run the risk of getting in contact with people who have COVID-19.

“I think across the fire service there’s been a lot of loss and in law enforcement too,” DiMaria said. “So those losses often hit really close, and it’s a brotherhood no doubt, and we all feel that pain.”

It’s a pain DiMaria hopes no one has to feel, now that first responders have access to the COVID-19 vaccine.

“That’s the scary part of this pandemic,” DiMaria said. “You just don’t have any idea who is going to be that person, so we need to get vaccinated and use all the universal precautions.”

Having just recently recovered from COVID-19 himself, Chief Larry Nisbet of Bayshore Fire Protection and Rescue Service District in Lee County got vaccinated first thing Wednesday morning.

It’s something Nisbet recommends not just to his team, but other first responders to do as well.

“Having the vaccination and being able to add that layer of protection is going to be a big asset to the public safety community,” Nisbet said.

Firefighters in Lee County started getting vaccines for COVID-19 Wednesday.

Both fire chiefs we spoke to in the region say it is up to each first responder whether they get vaccinated.

Chief DiMaria says most at his station are likely to get the vaccine after the loss of Tony Christensen.

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A rise in car burglaries is being seen by police on an island city in  Southwest Florida.

Marco Island Police Department is looking into whether burglars from last November are responsible for stealing four cars on the island recently.

Marco Island police told us all of the thefts have two things in common: Either the cars were unlocked, or the keys were left inside the cars.

That led to not only four cars being stolen, but seven others broken into, with things such as cash, electronics and computers stolen.

“It just seems insane,” Gina Larsen said. “I mean, Marco Island is such a safe place.”

People in this community are shocked to hear about a string of thefts in their neighborhoods.

The Salomon family recently moved to Marco from Miami, and said it’s something they expect to hear about back there, not on the island.

“Ever since we’re here, we know it’s so safe that we have left the cars actually unlocked sometimes,” Jenny Salamon said. “But now that you’re mentioning this, probably, it won’t happen again.”

Last month, investigators say thieves targeted the same communities and broke into 11 cars and stole three others.

Police are left wondering if it’s the same suspects involved once again.

Police Chief Tracy Frazzano took to social media, urging drivers to protect themselves.

“We want to remind everyone to lock your car doors, remove the keys or key fobs, and remove all valuables from your vehicles,” Frazzano said.

Police are also urging people to remove valuables from their cars, park in well-lit areas, and report anything that seems suspicious.

“It’s just the perfect terrible cherry on the end of 2020, and I hope the grinch is found and brought to justice,” Larsen said.

We also talked to people on the island about the license plate readers that were approved to go up on both entrances to the island.

Most people told us they think that technology will help cut down on crimes like these and bring the thieves to justice.

Out of the four cars that were stolen since recently, two have been recovered.

Police are still searching for a 2019 gray Toyota Tacoma and a 2010 White Acura TLX.

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A driver says a woman followed him for more than 30 miles over about 45 minutes in Southwest Florida across county lines.

Hendry County Sheriff’s Office arrested Elisia Hato, 44, for a road rage incident with another driver Wednesday.

The victim told deputies it began at the intersection with Fowler Street and Colonial Boulevard in Fort Myers and ended over in LaBelle.

According to the HCSO report, deputies say it all started because the suspect did not think the victim moved over fast enough when an ambulance passed by.

Investigators say Hato got out of her car and started yelling at the man who was still in his car, but the rage didn’t stop there.

Hato is accused of following another driver in a road rage fit and slamming into the driver’s vehicle multiple times.

“I can’t believe something like that has happened in this area,” Daphne Young said. “You hear of these crazy stories in the news, but you don’t know how things like that happen.”

The driver says Hato yelled at him and followed him closely from Fort Myers, where she lives, all the way to LaBelle.

“I mean, 45 minutes of chasing someone, that’s a lot,” Connor Weeks said. “That’s a lot of anger.”

The victim called 911 after the first crash, but he says Hato slammed into the back of his car two more times before Hendry County deputies responded and arrested her.

“Probably not the best time to chase and attack people with your vehicle during the holidays,” Week said. “It is the holidays, you know?”

“It scares me quite a bit,” Young said. “I have a 4-year-old, and there are some crazy drivers out there, so you wanna be safe on the roads.”

Florida Highway Patrol says, before drivers engage in a road rage incident, you should consider the consequences.

“What’s going to happen is potentially someone is going to get hurt,” FHP Lt. Greg Bueno said. “There’s going to be a traffic crash, or someone is going to go to jail.”

Hato denies ever striking the victim’s vehicle with the car she was driving but deputies say they found damage to both cars that was consistent with the victim’s account. She told Hendry County deputies she was following the driver who reported her because she saw a gun on his lap while in Lee County.

Fort Myers Police Department says Hato told police she never observed a weapon. They searched the other driver’s car and didn’t see a gun.

Hato faces a charge for aggravated battery.

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President Donald Trump pardoned more than two dozen people, including former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Charles Kushner, the father of his son-in-law, in the latest wave of clemency to benefit longtime associates and supporters.

The actions, in Trump’s waning time at the White House, bring to nearly 50 the number of people whom the president has granted clemency in the last week. The list from the last two days includes not only multiple people convicted in the investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia but also allies from Congress and other felons whose causes were championed by friends.

Pardons are common in the final stretch of a president’s tenure, the recipients largely dependent on the individual whims of the nation’s chief executive. Trump throughout his administration has shucked aside the conventions of the Obama administration, when pardons were largely reserved for drug offenders not known to the general public, and instead bestowed clemency on high-profile contacts and associates who were key figures in an investigation that directly concerned him.

Even members of the president’s own party raised eyebrows, with Republican Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska issuing a brief statement that said: “This is rotten to the core.”

The pardons Wednesday of Manafort and Roger Stone, who months earlier had his sentence commuted by Trump, were particularly notable, underscoring the president’s desire to chip away at the results and legacy of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. He has now pardoned five people convicted in that investigation, four of them associates like former national security adviser Michael Flynn and campaign adviser George Papadopoulos, both of whom pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.

“The pardons from this President are what you would expect to get if you gave the pardon power to a mob boss,” tweeted Andrew Weissmann, a Mueller team member who helped prosecute Manafort.

Manafort, who led Trump’s campaign during a pivotal period in 2016 before being ousted over his ties to Ukraine, was among the first people charged as part of Mueller’s investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. He was later sentenced to more than seven years in prison for financial crimes related to his political consulting work in Ukraine, but was released to home confinement last spring because of coronavirus concerns in the federal prison system.

Though the charges against Manafort did not concern the central thrust of Mueller’s mandate — whether the Trump campaign and Russia colluded to tip the election — he was nonetheless a pivotal figure in the investigation.

His close relationship to a man U.S. officials have linked to Russian intelligence, and with whom he shared internal campaign polling data, attracted particular scrutiny during the investigation, though Mueller never charged Manafort or any other Trump associate with conspiring with Russia.

Manafort, in a series of tweets, thanked Trump and lavished praise on the outgoing president, declaring that history would show he had accomplished more than any of his predecessors.

Trump did not pardon Manafort’s deputy, Rick Gates, who was sentenced last year to 45 days in prison after extensively cooperating with prosecutors, or former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, who pleaded guilty to campaign finance crimes related to his efforts to buy the silence of women who said they had sexual relationships with Trump. Both were also convicted in the Mueller probe.

New York City prosecutors, meanwhile, have been seeking to have the state’s highest court revive state mortgage fraud charges against Manafort after a lower court dismissed them on double jeopardy grounds. A spokesman for District Attorney Cy Vance said the pardon “underscores the urgent need to hold Mr. Manafort accountable for his crimes against the People of New York.”

Manafort and Stone are hardly conventional pardon recipients, in part because both were scolded by judges for effectively thumbing their nose at the criminal justice system as their cases were pending. Manafort was accused of witness tampering even after he was indicted and was accused by prosecutors of lying while trying to earn credit for cooperation.

Stone, who was convicted of lying to Congress about his efforts to gain inside information about the release by WikiLeaks of Russia-hacked Democratic emails during the 2016 campaign, was similarly censured by a judge because of his social media posts.

In a statement Wednesday, Stone thanked Trump and alleged that he had been subjected to a “Soviet-style show trial on politically-motivated charges”

Kushner is the father of Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and a wealthy real estate executive who pleaded guilty years ago to tax evasion and making illegal campaign donations. Trump and the elder Kushner knew each other from real estate circles and their children were married in 2009.

Prosecutors allege that after Kushner discovered that his brother-in-law was cooperating with authorities, he hatched a revenge and intimidation scheme. They say he hired a prostitute to lure his brother-in-law, then arranged to have a secret recording of the encounter in a New Jersey motel room sent to his own sister, the man’s wife.

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has called it “one of the most loathsome, disgusting crimes” he ever prosecuted as U.S. attorney.

Trump’s legally troubled allies were not the only recipients of clemency. The list of 29 recipients included people whose pleas for forgiveness have been promoted by people supporting the president throughout his term in office, among them former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky.

One recipient was Topeka Sam, whose case was promoted by Alice Johnson, a criminal justice advocate whom Trump pardoned and who appeared in a Super Bowl ad for him and at the Republican National Convention.

“Ms. Sam’s life is a story of redemption,” the White House said in its release, praising her for helping other women in need.

Others granted clemency included a former county commissioner in Florida who was convicted of taking gifts from people doing business with the county and a community leader in Kentucky who was convicted of federal drug offenses.

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We were with you every step of the way in 2020 when it came to Florida unemployment. We brought your questions directly to leaders charged with handling the unemployment problems in the state. We wanted to take a look back at the timeline for the unemployment process in Florida as the year comes to a close.

Since March, out of almost five million Floridians who applied, two million received unemployment benefits in 2020.

The lucky ones still experienced all kinds of issues along the way.

In what felt like the blink of an eye, businesses closed their doors. The flood gates opened, and unemployment claims went rushing to the state — half a million by April.

“People need their benefits, and they don’t need them four weeks from now. They need them two weeks ago when this whole system crashed down,” Mike Baroody told WINK News.

The state website couldn’t handle it, leaving hundreds of thousands in limbo, including Karen McInerney of Cape Coral.

“It’s a disaster, and the people deserve better,” McInerney told WINK News.

Weeks of delayed payments took people to the streets.

MORENaples group putting face to state’s unemployment problems with rally

The governor compared the system to a “jalopy” in “The Daytona 500.” And  then the state troubleshooted the broken website and brought in new leadership.

MORENew head of DEO working to revamp unemployment system, promises change

In April, we asked the new head of the DEO at the time: “Florida is one of the slowest if not the slowest to get people their unemployment benefits in the country. What do you say to that?”

“We’re going to bring that number up, I promise you that,” Secretary of the Florida Department of Management Services Jonathan Satter told WINK News.

The state broke that promise, prompting legal action.

“We’re hearing tragic stories about people who can’t buy their medication, they can’t buy food,” attorney Marie Mattox told WINK News.

“Feed myself, or pay all my rent. It’s a tough choice to have to make,” Franklin Speed told WINK News.

In May, the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity’s customer service lines were still backed up for hours, and the voice on the other end couldn’t help.

MORECall takers limited when trying to help unemployment applicants

“I’m unauthorized to look up claims or accounts because our system for employees, they’re still working on it,” a DEO call taker told WINK News.

The governor promised to launch an investigation, as frustration grew surrounding the swamped system.

“I mean, you have no option other than to sit there and wait,” Belinda Anderson told WINK News.

By June, we had already sent more than 10,000 of your names and concerns to the DEO for answers.

“I don’t know how much longer I can hold out without getting this money when I need it,” Victor Rivera told WINK News.

“If we don’t get the money, where is the money going?” Apryl Davies told WINK News.

The weekly $600 payments from the federal government ended in July, which was income that kept many people afloat, including Anne Lindberg of Port Charlotte.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do if that stops completely, I have no idea. I mean rent, sell my house, move, I don’t know,” Lindberg told WINK News.

Amid stalled stimulus talks, President Donald Trump brought brief relief, authorizing a limited amount of $300 weekly “Lost Wages Assistance” to supplement benefits.

“I was ecstatic, that $900 is necessary to pay my bills,” Bonnie Armstrong told WINK News.

In September, a new man in charge made more promises to get you paid and fix the system.

“We’ve paid 97% of eligible claimants,” new Executive Director of the DEO Dane Eagle told WINK News. “That’s a great number, but the 3%, that means 3% of Floridians, 3% of families out there are still waiting to get what’s owed to them. So that’s something that I’m committed to.”

“People need help, I mean, really. They do,” Cynthia Cox told WINK News.

As the state continued to open, we saw some people go back to work. The number of new unemployment claims started to decline.

But many are still left with tough decisions.

“Do you pay your credit card bill or do you buy food? Do you pay your mortgage or you know, you let your car payment go?” Donna Spreitzer told WINK News.

Despite some improvements, glitches and months of missing payments remain a problem.

“They owe me between $10,000 and $11,000,” Patrick Hoffman told WINK News.

A sea of people have struggled to navigate the broken unemployment system and now they’re hoping for change in the new year.

We spoke to many more people than who we could fit in our story, and we still hear from people every single day with unemployment issues.

But some good news is — in 2021 new applicants will see more weeks of state unemployment: up to 19 weeks.

The state legislature will also meet in March to discuss changes to the system.


For ongoing updates and information on unemployment, follow WINK News Investigative Reporter Sara Girard on Twitter and Facebook.

She also updates the WINK News FAQ: Unemployment Resources page as information is received.

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It’s been a tough year for the restaurant industry as a whole. Salty Papa’s Shrimp House in Fort Myers is no exception. But the owner found it in her heart to give to those who are even worse off than she is.

Co-owner Vallee Arnett is preparing to feed her neighbors. They’re making turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and there’s even candy. “Just kinda whipped it together,” Arnett said.

Salty Papa’s is on McGregor Boulevard in Fort Myers, where Arnett said, after seeing long food distribution lines day after day, she knew she had to do something.

“Seeing all that brought me to tears. It really made me stop and think. I have food, I have a big-screen TV, I have a roof, I have a job,” Arnett said. “So many millions are way worse than us. It affected me on a visceral level. I couldn’t not do something.”

She admits that she struggled during the pandemic, too. But she got a helping hand, so she felt it was only right to pay it forward.

“If it wasn’t for quick gathering of capital and a little help from PPE, I don’t know if we would be here, but I really did everything I could to survive,” Arnett said.

While her staff continued to prepare those delicious meals for the community, Arnett thought back to her darkest days during the pandemic. She said there were definitely “a couple tear-filled weeks.”

If you’re wondering who’s invited to the Salty Papa’s Christmas Eve lunch, it’s anyone who needs a nice warm meal.

“No questions asked. It doesn’t matter your circumstance. We aren’t prequalified. We don’t care. Not our business. If you could use a meal, just come down and get one,” Arnett said.

Arnett simply asked that you come, eat and make some friends because she hopes, that will make someone’s Christmas just a little bit brighter.

Lunch will be served at Salty Papas on Christmas Eve from noon to 4 p.m. Thursday in Fort Myers.

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