Crime and Public Safety

A prosecutor in a Florida murder case complained about a judge's ruling in a group text message that unknowingly included the judge – resulting in a mistrial for a man charged with murdering his girlfriend's 3-year-old son. Investigators say the suspect beat the toddler to death, then put him back in his car seat and dropped him back off with his mother as if nothing had happened. It's now the second mistrial in the case as a result of a misstep by the prosecution.

A man accidentally shot himself Thursday morning in the Lennard High School parking lot with a gun he found inside a student's car, deputies said. That student was arrested by deputies for having a weapon on school property.

"I woke up on a mattress and there’s a guy lying next to me saying, ‘I love you.’ I’m weirded out. He’s got my machete in his hand," the homeowner said on the call.

A Miami-Dade police officer has died days after he was shot in the head while trying to stop an armed robbery suspect, the police department said. 

A Port Charlotte teacher has been arrested after a missing teen was located at her residence. 

Deputies in the Florida Keys seized 55 pounds of cocaine bricks found floating off the coast of Key West on Saturday. Three days later, another bale containing 70 pounds of cocaine was discovered in the waters off Islamorada.

Florida troopers say a 65-year-old man has been arrested and his car was located in Tampa after a hit-and-run crash critically injured a Pine View School student in Sarasota County Tuesday morning.

When Erica Negrete Aviles was murdered outside her Dover home last month, her husband had also been shot but survived. Now a month later, he's also being charged with her murder after investigators say he had conspired with his cousin and his cousin's girlfriend to kill her because they suspected she was having an affair.

A 13-year-old girl, who was riding a bicycle through a crosswalk, is in critical condition after a hit-and-run crash in Sarasota County Tuesday afternoon, troopers said. 

A defense mental health expert in the penalty trial of Parkland school shooter Nikolas Cruz said he could pinpoint when he realized the 23-year-old mass murderer still has “irrational thoughts” — the two were making small talk when Cruz began describing plans for an eventual life outside prison.

Robert Mazur chronicled his first deep-dive into the dark and violent world of drug cartels in his best-selling novel “The Infiltrator,” which was made into a movie of the same name in 2016 starring Bryan Cranston. Now he has shared new, harrowing stories of his second dive undercover, this time into the Cali cartel.