Security staff members at the Holiday Inn on Front Beach Road saw the man floating about 40 yards out from shore around 6 p.m. Sunday, according to a Panama City Beach Police report. He was not breathing when they pulled him to shore, but he began breathing after the security staff members performed CPR.
The man was taken to Bay Medical Center, where he was in critical condition Monday afternoon, said Panama City Beach Police Chief Drew Whitman.
LYNN HAVEN
Donations are being accepted to benefit the family of a Florida State University Panama City police officer whose home was damaged by lightning Sunday. The family also lost most of their possessions in the resulting fire.
Donations to Officer Duane Gorey and his wife, Lisa Gorey, can be made at any Centennial Bank branch. To donate, write a check to Lisa Gorey or Duane Gorey and deposit it in person or by mail.
Gorey joined the school’s police department in 2003 after 20 years with the Panama City Police Department.
CHIPLEY
Two men are in custody and another is at large in connection with an early morning home invasion Monday.
Brandon Terrell Ramsey, 23, and Christopher James Thomas, 22, were arrested and charged with home invasion, burglary with battery and grand theft after Washington County Sheriff’s deputies found a Garret Road resident “bleeding profusely” from a head laceration, according to a news release.
The victim, who was not named, told investigators three men were involved, one of whom struck him in the head with a weapon and another who fired a shot before leaving with the other two and an undisclosed amount of cash, authorities reported.
A Chipley police officer stopped a vehicle matching the description the victim gave to investigators, and the officer took one suspect Ramsey into custody. Two others, Christopher James Thomas and 18-year-old Devante Keon Thomas, fled on foot in the Orange Street area of Chipley, investigators said. It’s unclear the relationship between the two Thomases.
The Northwest Florida Reception Center K-9 tracking team was deployed in the area and was able to track Christopher James Thomas to a residence near First Avenue and Peach Street. He tried to escape out a window, but officers inside the home were able to apprehend and arrest him, investigators reported.
Devante Keon Thomas is still at large, deputies said, and the community is asked to be vigilant in reporting anything that looks suspicious or could be related to this case. Anyone with information is asked to call the Washington County Sheriff’s Office at 850- 638-6111 or anonymously through 850-638-TIPS (8477).
PANAMA CITY — Prosecutors agree a man convicted based in part on the testimony of a discredited state drug analyst deserves a new trial on his drug charges, but they don’t concede drug evidence in the case should be inadmissible because of possible tampering, according to filing provided by the State Attorney’s Office.
In a response to a motion filed by Walter Smith, the attorney representing Jeremiah Beazley, prosecutors announced they agreed with Smith that Beazley deserves a new trial based on the newly discovered evidence indicating Joseph Graves, a former supervisor of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s drug lab in Pensacola, possibly tampered with or stole pills submitted as evidence against Beazley.
Smith also wanted Judge James Fensom to find the pills are inadmissible in a new trial, but prosecutors aren’t giving up the pills without a fight. Prosecutors now will have to establish the evidence wasn’t tampered with before the trial.
The document, which was filed Thursday, doesn’t quite say the state can prove the evidence in Beazley’s case was tampered with, but it indicates prosecutors are willing to give it a shot.
“The state does not concede that it would be unable to prove chain of custody or submit other evidence that tampering did not occur at a new trial,” it says. “Therefore, the state objects to the defendant’s request that the evidence be ruled inadmissible in any future trial.”
Beazley was convicted at trial last summer of two counts of possession of a controlled substance, tampering with evidence and two misdemeanor counts of resisting an officer without violence. According to testimony at his trial, he was arrested after a deputy saw him sell drugs, but Beazley ran away and threw hundreds of pills, some of which landed in a watery ditch and were unable to be recovered, before he could be taken into custody.
The deputy’s report indicated 378 pills were collected and submitted to Graves at the FDLE lab, but the lab returned only 288 pills. Graves testified that he weighed the pills because the weight of controlled substances determines whether a defendant will be charged with trafficking and face a possible minimum mandatory sentence. Graves said he didn’t count pills submitted to the lab, and the deputy testified he must have either miscounted the pills or entered the wrong number on his report.
Prosecutors also don’t believe Beazley deserves a new trial on the evidence tampering and resisting charges, “as those charges did not involve any analysis by Graves, and the state could have proven those charges beyond a reasonable doubt without his testimony.”
Fensom ordered the clerk’s office to release the evidence in Beazley’s case to the FDLE for retesting. Smith objected to that for several reasons: He argued Fensom had no jurisdiction to release the evidence because the case was on appeal at the time the order was signed; Smith doesn’t trust the FDLE because of the problems created the first time the agency had custody of the evidence; and the order was granted without a hearing, so Smith could request the evidence be retested by an independent third party.
The clerk’s office still has the evidence, so Smith now can ask for a hearing to address his concerns, according to the document.
PANAMA CITY — The officer arrested by Lynn Haven police on felony domestic violence charges has been arrested again — this time by the police department he worked for — for a similar incident that allegedly occurred six months ago.
Former Panama City Police officer Durandell Daniels, 37, was arrested last week by Lynn Haven Police for a felony and a misdemeanor stemming from allegations that he choked and beat his girlfriend. He was arrested again Monday afternoon by Panama City Police, and he was fired Tuesday, according to his personnel file.
“We are extremely suspicious of the timing and nature of these allegations, and Officer Daniels is looking forward to having his day in court, said Rusty Shepard, the attorney representing Daniels.
The new charges against Daniels, a five-year veteran of the PCPD, are felony aggravated stalking and felony domestic battery by strangulation. The felony domestic battery charge stems from an incident in Panama City on Sept. 8, 2013, and is very similar to the incident in Lynn Haven for which he was arrested last week.
Both felony domestic violence by strangulation charges are for allegedly choking his girlfriend, Shay Dorsey, during arguments. Daniels is accused of driving through the parking lot at Dorsey’s workplace and following her.
Lynn Haven charged him with both misdemeanor domestic battery and felony domestic battery by strangulation for allegedly choking and punching Dorsey, who declined to comment Tuesday.
Panama City Police Lt. Mark Laramore didn’t return a call for comment, so it was not clear why the charge was filed six months after the incident.
Judge Thomas Welch ordered Daniels into the pretrial release program during a bond hearing Tuesday. Welch also ordered Daniels into the PTRP during his first court appearance last week.
PANAMA CITY BEACH - Sheriff’s deputies are looking for a man who robbed the Watford’s Food Mart No. 1 at 8817 Thomas Drive around 4:30 a.m. Tuesday.
The robber is a white man who wore a gray hooded sweatshirt during the robbery. His likeness was captured on security cameras inside the store during the robbery, when he pulled a handgun on a cashier and demanded cash.
Anyone with information on the robber is asked to call the Bay County Sheriff’s Office at 850-747-4700 or CrimeStoppers at 850-785-TIPS (8477).
PANAMA CITY BEACH - Bay County Sheriff’s deputies have charged two men with kidnapping and robbery after the victim, a spring breaker, got the attention of a Bay County Jail employee at a Panama City Beach Wal-Mart.
The victim, who’s name was not released, was in the Wal-Mart at 3 a.m. Tuesday with a woman, Summer Zipperer, who he knocked down in order to get the attention of the jail employee, officials said. The victim described Zipperer as an accomplice to a kidnapping and robbery and added that two men were taking him to ATMs and forcing him, at gunpoint, to withdraw money, according to a news release.
Martin Anthony Scelfo, 22, and Joseph Alan Roberts, 32, both of Panama City Beach were located and arrested by deputies. They were both charged with kidnapping and robbery.
PANAMA CITY BEACH — A West Palm Beach man driving a taxi in Panama City Beach for Spring Break has been arrested and charged with sexual battery on two spring breakers.
Panama City Beach Police arrested Edgar Eduardo Lopez-Jaramillo, 22, Monday and charged him with sexual battery. The Bay County Sheriff’s Office did the same thing Tuesday for an attack that occurred early Monday.
According to the Sheriff’s Office:
Lopez-Jaramillo called his boss with CK Taxi Cab Company around 1:30 a.m. Monday and said he was going home sick, but instead he picked up a woman in the parking lot of a business on Thomas Drive. He drove her the opposite direction of her destination; when she objected he said he wanted to avoid traffic. The victim offered Lopez-Jaramillo all of her money to let her out of the cab when it became clear he would not take her to her hotel, but he told her to trust him and touched her.
The woman jumped out of the cab when Lopez-Jaramillo slowed at an intersection, but he ran after and forced her back into the van, where he pulled off her shorts and underwear and groped her as he drove. He stopped when he thought he saw a law enforcement vehicle, and the victim escaped the vehicle with her shorts and underwear in her hand.
She dropped her underwear, and investigators found it in the area where she said she had escaped. In the taxi, investigators found hair consistent with the victim’s, as well as items of her property.
Deputies charged Lopez-Jaramillo with sexual battery and kidnapping.
The Panama City Beach Police Department issues permits to taxi operators and conducts background checks on applicants. Lopez-Jaramillo, who had no arrest record in Bay County or West Palm Beach County, was issued a permit.
“We do disqualify some of them for various things,” Whitman said. Sex offenders and people who are wanted by law enforcement are disqualified, Whitman said.
On March 10, Lopez-Jaramillo allegedly picked up a woman around 3 a.m., drove her to a secluded spot on Front Beach Road and groped her. On Monday, PCBPD identified Lopez-Jaramillo as a driver for the company and sent his taxi driver permit photo, and five photos of men similar in appearance, to a detective at a college in Illinois, who showed them to the victim. The woman picked Lopez-Jaramillo out of the six photos as the man who victimized her.
During an interview with investigators, Lopez-Jaramillo admitted he had sexual contact with the woman, but he said it was consensual.
Lopez-Jaramillo was booked into the Bay County Jail to await a bond hearing Wednesday. It was not clear if he had retained the services of an attorney.
MARIANNA — A Jackson County woman was arrested and charged after deputies said she threatened her male companion with a knife.
Edith Fletcher, 58, of Marianna, got into a heated argument at about 10:45 p.m. Tuesday that "escalated" because Fletcher was intoxicated, according to a Jackson County Sheriff's Office news release.
At some point during the argument, Fletcher allegedly picked up a kitchen knife and threatened the man, whose name was not released, deputies wrote. The twogot into a "struggle" and the man was able to take the knife away. When later asked her intentions, she told police: "I was going to stab him."
Fletcher was taken to the Jackson County Correctional Facility to await first appearance on charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and violation of probation, according to the release.
No one was injured in the incident.
PANAMA CITY BEACH — Police are investigating the circumstances which led to a 62-year-old Spring Break chaperone falling to his death Wednesday morning.
Panama City Beach Police responded to a reported balcony fall about 9:30 am. at the Holiday Inn Resort at 11127 Front Beach Road, where they found Thomas H. Saunders, of Southlake, Texas, motionless on the lobby roof.
Bay County Crime Scene Investigators quickly cordoned off the area and covered the scene with a canopy to block the sightline of visiting guests on the 14 floors above.
“All I could see was the shape of a body under the cloth,” said Andrew Rulesh, visiting from Wisconsin. “But it was pretty disturbing.”
Saunders fell sometime earlier Wednesday morning from a 12th floor balcony facing Front Beach Road, according to Beach Police Capt. Robert Clarkson. Saunders was chaperoning his daughter and four friends, who were asleep in their room when the incident occurred, Clarkson said.
The manner in which Saunders fell and his exact cause of death were unclear Wednesday pending an autopsy, but officers did not suspect foul play.
Friends of Thomas Saunders’ daughter, Rachel Saunders, tweet words of condolence to her Twitter account Wednesday.
“I can’t believe this,” Rachel Saunders replied in a Twitter post. “It doesn’t even feel real.”
Management of the Holiday Inn indicated the incident was accidental and not alcohol-related.
“Apparently this is a medical-related accident, though police are still investigating,” said Julie Hilton, vice president of Hilton Inc. “It was not Spring Break-related and it was not drug- or alcohol-related.”
Hilton said despite efforts of the hotel chains to reduce balcony falls, incidents like this one could not be prevented.
“We don’t know of anything that could’ve been done,” she said. “Our thoughts and prayers go out to the family, and we’re here to help in any way we can.”
NEW YORK — Osama bin Laden's hours in a dark Afghanistan cave the evening of the Sept. 11 attacks were brought to light when his son-in-law testified in his own defense at his terrorism trial, portraying the al-Qaida leader as worried and apprehensive as he contemplated how America would respond.
The son-in-law, Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, said the al-Qaida leader asked him hours after the attacks what he thought would happen next.
"Politically, I said, America, if it was proven that you were the one who did this, will not settle until it accomplishes two things: to kill you and topple the state of the Taliban," Abu Ghaith said he told him.
Bin Laden responded: "You're being too pessimistic," Abu Ghaith recalled in a discussion that he said went late into the night.
He said bin Laden had sent a messenger to pick him up earlier on Sept. 11 from a house in Kabul, Afghanistan, where he had watched the news unfold on television. He said bin Laden told him: "We are the ones who did it."
He said he had met bin Laden only six or seven times previously before he was brought to the cave in a rough mountainous area.
The surprise testimony Wednesday by Abu Ghaith seemed to soften the image of the one-time Kuwaiti teacher and preacher known for fiery anti-American rhetoric on widely circulated post-attack videos until a prosecutor took his turn, eliciting damaging admissions from the 48-year-old defendant before showing a videotape on which Abu Ghaith spoke and included a hijacked plane slamming into a World Trade Center tower.
Questioned by defense lawyer Stanley Cohen and later by Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Ferrara, the bearded Abu Ghaith testified that bin Laden seemed worried that night.
The next morning, Abu Ghaith said, he saw bin Laden with an al-Qaida military leader, Abu Hafs al-Masri, and current al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri at breakfast, and bin Laden invited him to join them.
He said bin Laden told him: "Now, after these events ... it's a no-brainer to predict what is going to happen. What you expected may actually happen. And I want to deliver a message to the world. And Dr. Ayman also wants to deliver a message. I want you to deliver that message."
Within two hours, the four men were posing in front of a rocky backdrop as Abu Ghaith spoke using what he said were "bullet points" provided by bin Laden that mixed verses from the Quran with justification for the terrorist attacks.
It was a position that would bring the onetime imam infamy as well as a place in the inner circle of the world's most wanted terrorists and eventually to federal court in Manhattan, where he was brought after his capture last year in Jordan.
Abu Ghaith was the final witness in his trial on charges he conspired to kill Americans and aid al-Qaida as a spokesman for the terrorist group. Closing arguments were scheduled for Monday.
The testimony was a rare gambit by the defense, a last-ditch effort to counter a mountain of evidence against Abu Ghaith, including an alleged confession and the video showing him sitting beside bin Laden on Sept. 12, 2001, and another in which he warned Americans that "the storm of airplanes will not abate." The defense has never disputed that Abu Ghaith associated with bin Laden after 9/11, but it contends he was recruited as a religious teacher and orator, and had no role in plotting more attacks.
On cross-examination, though, Abu Ghaith admitted that he sent his pregnant wife, six daughters and a son to Kuwait while he went to Afghanistan on Sept. 7, 2001, after hearing inside and outside al-Qaida training camps that something big was going to happen soon.
Ferrera mocked Abu Ghaith's statement that he stayed and helped bin Laden for two weeks after Sept. 11 because the conditions in Afghanistan were tense and he had no way to travel.
"You are telling this jury that you made a speech in which you called on people to terrorize the infidels because you didn't have a personal car?" he said, drawing from one juror a smile and a nod to a fellow juror.
"I don't understand the question," Abu Ghaith responded.
Testifying through an Arabic interpreter, the Kuwaiti-born defendant seemed relaxed, wearing a blue shirt, open at the collar, beneath a charcoal-colored jacket.
He testified he first met bin Laden when the al-Qaida leader, who was living in Kandahar, Afghanistan, summoned him in June 2001 after hearing he was a preacher from Kuwait. He took bin Laden's daughter as an additional wife years after 9/11.
The defendant said that videos he made warning of more attacks on Americans were based on "quotes and points by Sheik Osama." He testified his videotaped sermons were religious in nature, and meant to encourage Muslims to fight oppression.
Abu Ghaith said he wasn't involved in recruiting aspiring terrorists and denied allegations he had prior knowledge of the Sept. 11 attacks or the failed shoe-bomb airline attack by Richard Reid in December 2001.
"My intention was to deliver a message, a message I believed in," he said. "I was hoping the United States would say, 'Let's sit down and talk and solve these problems,' but America was going on and doing what I expected them to do."
His lawyers said they were hopeful that another part of Abu Ghaith's testimony, that he had met self-professed Sept. 11 architect Khalid Sheik Mohammed, would cause the federal judge overseeing the trial to reconsider his decision to exclude Mohammed from testifying via videotape from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Ferrera zeroed in on Abu Ghaith's testimony that he accepted an invitation to meet with bin Laden on Sept. 11 because the al-Qaida leader was a sheik who deserved respect, along with his admission that he was aware bin Laden's organization was behind earlier terrorist attacks against Americans abroad.
"Despite knowing that he was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans," the prosecutor asked, "you met with him to be polite?"
PANAMA CITY BEACH — A bill that would regulate commercial parasailing in Florida cleared another committee hurdle Wednesday and could soon be on its way to the Senate floor.
Sponsored by Sen. Maria Sachs, D- Delray Beach, SB 320 outlines safety regulations for the industry, including imposed weather restrictions and minimum insurance requirements for parasail operators.
“The regulations are ‘common sense’ regulations,” Sachs testified to the Senate Community Affairs Committee Wednesday. “When I asked the parasail operators what is it we can do to continue the thrill of the game and minimize the risk, they all said the same thing: it’s the weather.”
Sachs said regulating the weather conditions in which parasail boats can operate would make the sport safer for customers of the more than 150 parasail operators in Florida.
Also known as the “White-Miskell Act,” the bill is named for two women who died in separate Pompano Beach parasailing accidents in 2007 and 2012.
Pompano Beach Mayor Lamar Fisher also addressed the committee, and said the city has worked tirelessly alongside Sachs to regulate parasailing.
“The city of Pompano Beach, unfortunately, has had two deaths from parasailing,” Fisher said. “We are asking and begging for your support today.”
The committee approved the bill unanimously and a formal request has been made to have the bill read on the Senate floor before the session ends in early May.
“What we’re waiting for now is for them to actually calendar it,” Sachs said Thursday. “I think it’s going to be soon.”
Two previous bills to regulate parasailing that have failed to pass in past years. A new bill was re-filed in November, months after another parasailing accident in Panama City Beach injured two Indiana teens.
“It’s one of our Florida favorite water sports,” said Sachs, noting support from the Parasail Safety Council and the water sport industry. “We have about 150 operators throughout the state, but we have very few substantive regulations, which have resulted in serious injuries and deaths.”
An identical bill in the Florida House will need to be approved by the Regulatory Affairs Committee before moving to the House floor. The committee has not yet placed the bill on the calendar.
PANAMA CITY BEACH — An Indiana man was jailed Wednesday on felony charges for allegedly dumping a cooler full of ice and water over a 12th floor balcony.
Imagine if you will, Deputy Chris Faircloth’s surprise when, around 3 p.m. on a warm and cloudless day on the pool deck at Legacy by the Sea Condominiums, a torrent of water and ice chunks suddenly poured down on the pavement next to him. Faircloth looked to the sky, where he saw a man, who he later determined was Tate Andrews, a 20-year-old from Kokomo, Ind., doubled over the balcony’s edge laughing, according to police and court records.
One man’s joke is another man’s felony. Faircloth went up to the 12th floor, where he found Andrews “in the bathroom attempting to elude arrest.”
He didn’t elude hard enough.
Faircloth arrested him for throwing a deadly missile, a third-degree felony that carries a potential sentence of up to five years in prison. After Fairchild read Andrews his Miranda Rights he asked if Andrews had noticed the signs posted throughout the complex warning against throwing stuff off balconies. Andrews had seen them, he said.
Andrews didn’t give any other statements to law enforcement after his arrest. He was booked into the Bay County Jail to await a bond hearing Thursday. Judge Timothy Welch set his bond at $1,500.
It’s not clear if Andrews has an attorney. He could not be reached for comment Thursday.
PANAMA CITY BEACH - CrimeStoppers is offering a $15,000 reward for information leading to the location and recovery of a spring breaker who has been missing since March 3.
Reny Jose, a 21-year-old Rice University student, went missing from a beach house he and several friends rented for Spring Break. His friends reported him missing to the Bay County Sheriff’s Office March 4, and he has been the subject of extensive search efforts.
The information must be submitted through Panhandle CrimeStoppers, and it must lead to Jose. It can be reported anonymously by calling 850-785-TIPS (8477.)
CHIPLEY — It’s been nearly five years since the eyes of the nation were fixed on Chipley, watching as the search for 7-month-old Shannon Dedrick unfolded.
The conclusion was a rare happy ending, with Washington County Sheriff Bobby Haddock reporting “Baby Shannon,” as she became known worldwide, had been found.
“We are the proud papas of a baby girl,” Haddock said in a national press conference in November 2009. “There were a lot of grown men crying and shedding tears. Percentage-wise, we usually don’t get this kind of ending.”
But Baby Shannon’s story had just begun.
Read the rest of the story at our sister paper, the Washington County News or in Saturday's print edition.
MARIANNA — A man is in critical condition after crashing into a stopped school bus at a bus stop Friday afternoon.
Two bus passengers were taken to the hospital for possible injuries.
William Scott Blackburn, 42, ran into the back of a school bus as it was stopping to drop off students on County 165 at Georgia Road, a Florida Highway Patrol news release states. Blackburn was taken to Tallahassee Memorial Hospital in critical condition and two passengers on the Jackson County school bus were transported to Jackson Hospital for possible injuries.
Blackburn had not been wearing a seatbelt, the release states. FHP is investigating the incident and charges are pending. Alcohol was not involved in the crash, FHP said.
The bus had been driving north in the northbound lane when it stopped to unload students, the release states. Blackburn, who was driving a 2004 Mercury Grand Marquis, was traveling behind the bus and failed to slow down, crashing the front end of the vehicle into the rear end of the bus.
School bus driver Orenza Waddell, 52, was not injured, the release states. The bus sustained $20,000 in damage.
PANAMA CITY BEACH -- A Georgia teen was arrested Friday evening after he burglarized a condo earlier in the week.
Christopher Clanton, 18, of Thomasville, Ga. had broken into a room at Twin Palms Condominium Wednesday with an intent to steal money from individuals he befriended upon arriving to the area during Spring Break, according to a Panama City Beach Police Department news release.
Authorities arrested him Friday at the same property. He confessed to stealing $1,700 from the unit.
Clanton supposed his new friends’ weren’t in the Twin Palms room Wednesday when he entered the lock combination to the condo’s front door, the release states. However, after becoming aware that someone was in the room, he fled the scene with $1,700 in stolen cash.
Two days later, the burglar was spotted at the condo by the same person who saw Clanton steal the money, the release states. The man chased him on foot until PCBPD arrived and arrested Clanton.
Although the cash was not found on him, 23 Aderall pills were discovered in his back pack, the release states. Clanton later told officials he’d come to the area on Spring Break to commit burglaries and sell narcotics.
PANAMA CITY BEACH — Sgt. Emily Melton stood at the side of South Thomas Drive and watched a group of spring breakers on rented scooters go by. So dangerous. You won’t see her on one, Melton said.
Maybe 30 seconds later Melton was called to the end of South Thomas, where a scooter had crashed into two cars, including a Panama City Beach patrol car.
Melton had to travel only about a quarter mile to the crash scene. The police seem to be everywhere. But EMS and police had already arrived.
The two women on the scooter had some cuts and scrapes, but paramedics patched them up in the left hand turn lane and they didn’t need to go the hospital. It was their first time on a scooter, said Yasmine Miller-Hughes, a friend of the two women.
There are approximately 500 to 600 scooters for rent on the beach at any given time, Police Chief Drew Whitman said. There are crashes several times a day during Spring Break, Melton said.
“Three of my cars were damaged this weekend by scooters,” Whitman said.
Whitman is working on a new ordinance that would require businesses that rent scooters to provide some basic instruction on scooter operation on-site before they hit the streets. It won’t be ready before the end of Spring Break, Whitman said, but he hopes the City Council will have a chance to pass it before the summer begins.
PANAMA CITY BEACH — The crowd got to Wal-Mart before police did.
About an hour earlier, as the sun began to set over another day of Spring Break recently, 10 or 20 officers from the Panama City Beach Police, Bay County Sheriff’s Office, the Division of Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco, Florida Highway Patrol and other agencies got to work moving crowds of thousands of people away from the beach.
The pushing began when the beaches behind Club LaVela and Spinnaker started to clear out. Crowds of between 3,000 and 10,000 people cram through the only public beach access toward Thomas Drive.
In the Club LaVela parking lot, PCBPD K-9 officer Argo snarled and barked at anyone who got too close. Cpl. Jason Gleason, Argo’s handler, has wounds on his wrist that show what happens if you get too close to Argo. Spring breakers got the message and slowly cleared out.
In packs of hundreds, they meandered west along South Thomas Drive, jumping in and out of standstill traffic and dancing on cars. By the time they get to Front Beach Road, Argo was waiting, tugging at his restraints, seemingly begging to bite somebody.
From the Circle K at South Thomas and Front Beach, the crowd moved to Wal-Mart. Gleason, Argo and at least a dozen other officers followed, but by the time they crossed the street the Wal-Mart parking lot was pandemonium. Traffic in the parking lot was bumper to bumper, nobody was moving.
When nobody’s moving, groups begin to bump. When they bump, sometimes they fight each other and rob each other, so police do a lot of pushing because pushing them keeps them moving.
“They follow the party,” Police Chief Drew Whitman said. “So we just keep them moving, first for the community’s safety then for their safety.”
Pushing prevents bumping
Some spring breakers tell police they don’t mind being herded, that they feel safer with police around. Others don’t care to be told where to go when they’re not necessarily breaking the law. But the pushing beats the alternative.
In the Wal-Mart parking lot, a couple of Kentucky boys and Minnesota girls who had met each other earlier in the day bumped with another group. There was a dispute over who had the right-of-way. When the Kentucky boys refused to yield because, one of them said, there was nowhere to go, the other group got out of their car.
Chandra Sieben, a student at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota, got out of the car to try to cool things down. It didn’t work out.
“This guy tried to punch me, and I blocked it,” Sieben said. “Then he started to choke me.”
There were five or six guys, Sieben said. They began to pull people out of the car. Zack Ziege, a student at the University of Kentucky, was punched and knocked to the ground. Another man was punched twice. They were not hurt badly, they said.
People around filmed it, and one of them sent video footage to Sieben, who showed it to Officer Jacob Moore with the Panama City Beach Police. By the time police showed up and started to clear the parking lot, where pedestrians danced in shopping carts to the music blaring from the cars inching toward Front Beach Road, the attackers had fled in a black sedan.
“This is not how I wanted to end my night,” Ziege said after giving his statement to Moore.
Why Wal-Mart?
“Because Wal-Mart is where they have low prices. Always,” joked Chad Cox.
Cox is a senior marketing major at Southern Mississippi University. He’s got a 3.5 grade-point average, and he came to the beach to let off some steam before finals next week. But he wasn’t really at Wal-Mart for the low prices. He’d been among the crowd leaving the beach about an hour earlier.
Despite signs posting warnings that the parking lot is for Wal-Mart customers only, the parking lot is full of spring breakers like Cox. Police know most of them aren’t there for the rollback prices on bananas.
It’s free parking, police said, so spring breakers take advantage. But the result is a nightly mob of young people who spent the day on the beach. They’re almost all from out of town and many if not most of them have been drinking alcohol. They might not have anywhere better to be either.
Many of these people are part of what police refer to as the “100-mile club,” people who drive a couple of hours to the beach for the weekend or the night. Members of the 100-mile club don’t eat in local restaurants, drink in local bars or stay in local hotels, Whitman said.
The problem was so bad last weekend police shut down the entire parking lot by blocking every entrance and pushing cars out. Police did this about 10 times over a single weekend, Whitman said. Wal-Mart has started to enforce the warning signs and is towing unauthorized cars, Whitman said.
“Once that gridlocks you can’t move because people start blocking,” Whitman said. “That’s when people starting getting frustrated and wanting to fight.”
Two pedestrians, including a Panama City Beach Police captain, were injured Sunday morning in a wreck, according to a news release from the Florida Highway Patrol.
FHP officials reported that Richard Allen Johns, 29, of Panama City Beach was traveling west on the eastbound lane of U.S. 98 near Hills Road. A second vehicle was involved in an earlier crash and was sitting across the eastbound lanes facing south. A wrecker was attempting to remove the second vehicle, a Honda Accord, from the roadway and the pedestrians, Capt. Ronald Crowson, 49, of the Panama City Beach Police Department and Royce Kershaw III, 29, were standing in the inside lane of U.S. 98, next to the Honda Accord when Johns’ vehicle collided with the left rear of the Accord, which was connected to the wrecker.
The front of Johns’ vehicle then collided with Crowson and Kershaw. Johns’ vehicle came to rest in the paved median facing west. The Honda Accord came to rest just west of collision facing south. Crowson and Kershaw came to rest in the inside lane of Panama City Beach Parkway facing east. The wrecker came to rest in the outside of U.S. 98, officials said.
The pedestrians were taken to Bay Medical Center for treatment. Johns was charged with driving on the wrong side of a roadway, DUI with serious bodily injury, DUI with property damage and DUI with personal injury, officials said.
Crowson and Kershaw were listed in serious condition at a local hospital by the FHP. Panama City Beach Police said Sunday afternoon that Crowson had non-life-threatening injuries and was still being treated at the hospital.