Driver might face charges after fleeing Homestead cops, killing 3 teens in wreck
A 16-YEAR-OLD CRASHED INTO A CANAL, KILLING THREE FRIENDS.
on Tuesday were working to build a criminal case against the teenage driver of a car that plunged into a Homestead canal over the holiday weekend after speeding away from cops, killing three passengers — and leaving their relatives struggling to understand what led to the wreck.
The 16-year-old driver, who has not been identified by police, was the only survivor in the dark-colored sedan that jumped a curb, plowed through a guardrail and into the water early Saturday morning off East Palm Drive and Southeast 28th Avenue in Homestead.
The Homestead police on Tuesday declined to released the names of the three dead teens, whose ages ranged from 14 to 16. Relatives and the MiamiDade Medical Examiner’s Office have identified them as Terrance Valdivia, 14, Jeremiah Calderon, 16, and his girlfriend, Rihanna Vargas, 14.
Calderon’s family has started a GoFundMe page to help with funeral costs. Jeremiah was a student at My Life My Power Prep, a private school in HomeDetectives stead. One of four siblings, he loved to ride ATVs and dirt bikes, and wanted to join the U.S. Army after school, his mother said.
“Jeremiah was the spark in our family. He was vivacious, high spirited, and resilient,” Vanessa Rosales told the Herald on Tuesday night.
She also said the family wants answers from Homestead police.
“We’re curious about the whole situation. I have questions about what happened,” she said. “Are the police responsible in any way? I don’t know.”
The Homestead police department said officers were not chasing the car, which belonged to the grandmother of the teen driver and was taken without her permission. Homestead Sgt. Fernando Morales, a spokesman, gave this account of what happened:
On Saturday morning around 3 a.m., the teen’s car cut off a Homestead police officer driving on patrol. “It was very blatant and on purpose,” Morales said.
The car sped off, too fast for the Homestead police officer, who gave up and stopped the pursuit, Morales said.
True Homestead, a community blog and Facebook page, posted an Instagram screenshot purported to be from the teen driver bragging about running from the cops.
About an hour later, about 4 a.m., Homestead Sgt. R. Khawly saw a car that matched the description stopped on Speedway Boulevard. According to police, he activated his lights, pulled up behind the car, and got out to walk up to the car.
But the car sped off. Khawly, police said, radioed what happened, got back into his patrol car and tried to catch up, Morales said.
On Palm Drive, the teens’ car “blacked out” — meaning it turned off its lights to try and avoid police — and may have lost control while trying to turn, hitting the curb and plunging into the canal. “It was really dark roads,” Morales said.
Morales said Khawly was blocks away and did not see or hear the crash. “It was not considered a chase,” Morales said.
At the Keys Gate Charter
School, the officer saw a dark-colored sedan pulling out of the parking lot. Believing it was the car that had fled, he pulled it over and quickly realized it wasn’t the teens, Morales said.
But the people in the car said they had just heard a “loud bang” in the area by the canal. Officers went to investigate and found the submerged car — with the three dead teens inside.
As the car was pulled from the water, detectives found the driver injured in nearby woods. He was hospitalized, police said.
Terrance’s relatives later gathered to mourn the teen at the site of the crash. They told WPLG-ABC 10 that Terrance had been out with friends and was supposed to have been home by midnight.
“I told him plenty of times to stop hanging around with that person,” his sister said of one of his friends. “And he didn’t listen.”
Jeremiah’s mother also said she believed he was home asleep when the crash happened.
The Miami-Dade Medical Examiner’s Office ruled the teens died of accidental blunt force trauma, with “submersion in water” as a contributing condition. The Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office said it is also monitoring the investigation.
Morales said Homestead Police’s traffic homicide unit is poring over the car to try and recreate what happened.
“This is going to take a while,” he said. “The car was totally mangled and submerged.”
A historically Black college in Georgia is investigating after students say a professor trivialized the death of Miami Gardens teenager Trayvon Martin.
A student at Fort Valley State University posted Tuesday on Twitter, saying a business professor told students to remove their hoodies and that they weren’t “going for Skittles and sweet tea.” The tweet has been shared more than 20,000 times.
University officials said “a thorough investigation” is underway into the reported remarks students say mock the Black teenager’s death.
“Because we take our students’ experience very seriously and want to promote the highest level of student success in a positive environment — in following the University’s protocols, we immediately opened an investigation into this complaint to clearly understand what occurred,” a spokesperson for the university told McClatchy News in a statement.
The controversy unfolded online Tuesday after a student took to Twitter to share her outrage over the quip allegedly made by a professor, who was not identified.
“My professor just said ‘Take your hoodie off... you’re not going for skittles and sweet tea’ ... I’m speechless,” the student wrote in the tweet.
In an email to university President Paul A. Jones, student Janei Dortilus described the moment her professor asked a student to remove his hood before proceeding to “hint at the humorless murder of
Trayvon Martin,” screenshots show.
Martin, 17, was fatally shot by neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman in Sanford on Feb. 26, 2012. Zimmerman called 911 to report a “suspicious person.” Despite being told not to approach the person, Zimmerman did and shot Martin, claiming it was in selfdefense.
Martin was unarmed when he was killed, wearing a hoodie and carrying a bag of Skittles and can of sweet tea.
Zimmerman was charged with second-degree murder but was acquitted by a jury in July 2013, a decision that sparked nationwide protests and served as a catalyst for social-justice groups, including Black Lives Matter.
“As you can imagine, I am filled with repugnance, rage, indignation and frustration,” Dortilus wrote in her email, calling the professor’s comment “inappropriate” and “insensitive.” “This unfathomable behavior should not be tolerated at my university, or any other institution for that matter.”
Her tweet has sparked outrage from the campus community and calls for the professor in question to be disciplined.
The university declined to comment on the incident to ensure “that the integrity of the investigation is maintained,” according to a statement.
Manatee County Commissioner Vanessa Baugh took the stage ahead of a public meeting to apologize for her role in creating a VIP list of residents to receive a COVID-19 vaccine.
“I want to apologize to all the residents I have disappointed, according to some news outlets,” Baugh said.
“It is true that I sent the email because I wanted to make sure certain people were on the list,” she added, echoing a statement released Wednesday that claimed she only wanted to add those residents to the overall Vaccine Standby Pool. “I did have a list of the registry with 8,000 people on it, so I may have missed some people on it.”
The Bradenton Herald reported Wednesday on emails obtained through a public records request. The records show how Baugh included herself, the developer of Lakewood Ranch and others on a list sent via email to Public Safety Director Jacob Saur.
Baugh’s list of residents to receive the vaccine came as she organized a state-run pop-up site at Premier Sports Campus in Lakewood
Ranch, specifically choosing residents from two ZIP codes to receive shots.
Those two ZIP codes — 34202 and 34211 — are among the wealthiest in Manatee County. The average median income in those areas is twice as high as the county’s overall median income, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.
Compared to other parts of the county, those ZIP codes have also seen far fewer confirmed cases of COVID-19, according to the Florida Department of Health’s COVID-19 dashboard.
THREE SAY THEY WERE CALLED
Baugh said she has not received the vaccine, but in interviews with the Bradenton Herald, at least three others on Baugh’s list confirmed that they were called to schedule appointments. Two of them say they were actually vaccinated.
After her apology, however, Baugh still claimed that she was trying to just make sure her former neighbors were on the list. Baugh also said she didn’t want to speak for Lakewood Ranch developer Rex Jensen, but that they had spoken and he was upset that his personal information was released to the Bradenton Herald in response to a public records request. Similarly, Baugh expressed concern over her former neighbors having their information released.
As a matter of practice, the Herald usually does not publish people’s street addresses, dates of birth and phone numbers, for privacy reasons. The email in its entirety is public record and no such privacy exists, however, under Florida’s public records laws.
Baugh on Thursday did not explain why she was able to review a list of nearly 8,000 residents in those ZIP codes. As county staff worked with Baugh to organize the event, she overruled their suggestion to draw names at random from the county’s entire Vaccine Standby Pool.
Florida residents 65 or older are eligible to enter the Vaccine Standby Pool.
The decision to pull certain ZIP codes deviated from Manatee’s previously established policy of picking names at random, no matter where a person lives or when they signed up. The system was created that way to ensure fairness and keep everyone, including underserved communities that may lack internet access, on a level playing field.
Commissioners were not informed of Baugh’s participation in planning the popup until Tuesday morning. They said they would have preferred to have been a part of the process.
DESANTIS ALSO UNDER FIRE
On Thursday, Baugh
reiterated that she was following the governor’s directions when she picked the ZIP codes.
“I also want to apologize to Gov. [Ron] DeSantis. I don’t do that because I feel that I’m putting him in jeopardy because of Lakewood Ranch. I did exactly what he wanted. I am thankful and appreciate that he brought 3,000 additional doses to this county. That’s 3,000 more than we would’ve had.”
The governor’s own comments landed him in hot water Wednesday after he threatened to send additional doses to other parts of Florida if Manatee residents and officials continued to complain about exclusivity.
“If Manatee County doesn’t like us doing this, then we are totally fine putting this in counties that want it. We’re totally happy to do that,” DeSantis said during a press conference at the Premier Sports Campus site. “Anyone that’s saying that, let us know if you want us to send it to Sarasota or Charlotte or Pasco or wherever, let us know — we’re happy to do it.”
In an appearance on “The Ingraham Angle” on the FOX News Channel late Wednesday night, DeSantis defended himself against the criticism.
“Today’s event where we have the 3,000 seniors, that was over and above what
that county had been getting. We saw that we needed to get more seniors in that particular county, so we worked with some of the local neighborhoods,” DeSantis said. “Where is there a lot of seniors? Where is it that we can go in and knock out several thousand very quickly to get those numbers up.”
But Manatee County’s own drive-thru vaccination site was praised by the governor last month, for its efficiency. At the time, DeSantis hinted that he might increase Manatee’s vaccine allotment.
Between the Tom Bennett Park drive-thru site and the site set-up at the county’s public safety complex, the county and local health department have the capacity to vaccinate 3,000 people a day. The county is currently only allotted 6,100 vaccines a week. MCR Health uses 1,000 of those vaccines to target minority communities facing higherthan-average infection rates.
“I was so embarrassed that Manatee County, that Lakewood Ranch was brought up in that interview,” Baugh said Thursday, referring to the FOX News Channel interview. “If any commissioner sitting here isn’t embarrassed that that happened, then you’ve got an issue that is far more than wanting to serve the people of Manatee County because they didn’t deserve that — the people didn’t.”
“Have I been upset over this? Yes. Do I feel terrible? Yes. Do I feel terrible over this VIP list, which it wasn’t? Yes, I do, but I stand by our governor,” she continued. “I thank him from the bottom of my heart for bringing in the vaccines that he did and I just hope that he’ll do it again.”
Manatee County again made national headlines with Baugh’s apology airing on CNN Right Now on Thursday afternoon. Robert Powell, president of Manatee County NAACP, responded to how DeSantis and Baugh have defended their actions.
“It is unfortunate because the Black and brown communities suffered here the most, and for them to do it that way and to just limit to that ZIP code really just blew my mind,” Powell told CNN anchor Brianna Keilar.
Like many, Powell was happy to see more doses of a COVID vaccine arrive in Manatee but thought it should’ve been made available to the entire county.
“That troubled me. That troubled my community,” Powell said.
The criticism went all the way to Washington, D.C., where White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was asked to weigh in on DeSantis’ retribution threat during a press briefing on Thursday.
“Our effort to vaccinate, to get 100 million shots in the arms of Americans in the first 100 days, and exceed that goal, is not through a political prism, and we certainly would not support any effort to have the people of Florida or any state, Democrat or Republican, blue or red, impacted by the decisions of their leadership,” she said. “So no, I would not see us taking action along those lines.”
A NASA rover streaked through the orange Martian sky and landed on the planet Thursday, accomplishing the riskiest step yet in an epic quest to bring back rocks that could answer whether life ever existed on Mars.
Ground controllers at the space agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, cheered and exchanged fist bumps and high-fives in triumph – and relief – on receiving confirmation that the six-wheeled Perseverance had touched down on the red planet, long a deathtrap for incoming spacecraft.
It took a tension-filled
11 1⁄2 minutes for the signal to reach Earth.
“Touchdown confirmed! Perseverance safely on the surface of Mars,” flight controller Swati Mohan announced.
The landing marks the third visit to Mars in just over a week. Two spacecraft from the United Arab Emirates and China swung into orbit around Mars on successive days last week.
All three missions lifted off in July to take advantage of the close alignment of Earth and Mars, traveling some 300 million miles in nearly seven months.
Perseverance, the biggest, most advanced rover ever sent by NASA, became the ninth spacecraft to successfully land on Mars, every one of them from the U.S.
The car-size, plutoniumpowered vehicle arrived at Jezero Crater, hitting NASA’s smallest and trickiest target yet: a 5–by-4-mile strip on an ancient river delta full of pits, cliffs and
fields of rock. Scientists believe that if life ever flourished on Mars, it would have happened 3 billion to 4 billion years ago, when water still flowed on the planet.
Over the next two years, Percy, as it is nicknamed, will use its 7-foot arm to drill down and collect rock samples with possible signs of bygone microscopic life. Three to four dozen chalksize samples will be sealed in tubes and set aside on Mars to be retrieved by a fetch rover and brought homeward by another rocket ship. The goal is to get them back to Earth as early as 2031.
Scientists hope to answer one of the central questions of theology, philosophy and space exploration.
“Are we alone in this sort of vast cosmic desert, just flying through space, or is life much more common? Does it just emerge whenever and wherever the conditions are ripe?” said deputy project scientist Ken Williford. “We’re really on the
verge of being able to potentially answer these enormous questions.”
China’s spacecraft includes a smaller rover that also will be seeking evidence of life — if it makes it safely down from orbit in May or June.
Perseverance was on its own during the NASA-described “seven minutes of terror” descent.
Flight controllers waited helplessly as the preprogrammed spacecraft hit the thin, 95% carbon dioxide Martian atmosphere at 12,100 mph, or 16 times the speed of sound, slowing as it plummeted.
It released its
70-foot parachute, jettisoned its heat shield, and then used a rocket-steered platform known as a sky crane to lower the rover the final 60 or so feet to the surface.
It was the second time NASA dropped in on Mars via sky crane. The rover Curiosity pioneered the technique in 2012; the vehicle is still prowling around a crater.
Mars has proved a treacherous place: In the span of less than three months in 1999, a U.S. spacecraft was destroyed upon entering orbit because engineers had mixed up metric and English units, and an American lander crashed on Mars after its engines cut out prematurely.
Perseverance will conduct
an experiment in which it will convert small amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere into oxygen, a process that could be a boon to future astronauts by providing breathable air and an ingredient for rocket fuel.
The rover is also equipped with a record 25 cameras and two microphones, many of them turned on during descent. Among the neverbefore-seen views NASA intends to send back in the next couple days: the enormous supersonic parachute billowing open and the ground getting closer.
“A feast for the eyes and ears. It’s really going to be spectacular,” observed Arizona State University’s Jim Bell, lead scientist for a pair of mast cameras that will serve as the rover’s eyes.
NASA is teaming up with the European Space Agency to bring the rocks home. Perseverance’s mission alone costs nearly $3 billion.
The only way to confirm — or rule out — signs of past life is to analyze the samples in the world’s best labs. Instruments small enough to be sent to Mars wouldn’t have the necessary precision.
“It’s really the most extraordinary, mind-boggingly complicated and will-be history-making exploration campaign,” David Parker, the European Space Agency’s director of human and robotic exploration, said on the eve of landing.