by Naja and Arnaud Girard It’s 7:30 am at the bus stop on Truman and Emma. Eleven-year old Dimitri is about to climb into the morning school bus. Like him, most of the kids sitting on the bus are African American. Like them, he has a mere 40% probability of graduating from high school with Read More…
“This allows the prosecutor to say I didn’t take the decision. The Grand Jury did it. The people did it. But of course, how vigorously the prosecutor presents the case is everything. It’s just the prosecutor presenting a case to these Grand Jurors. If the DA doesn’t want an indictment or has questions it could Read More…
by Naja and Arnaud Girard “Cartwright began yelling as loud as he could, and almost immediately a large crowd began forming around us […] Within minutes a crowd of at least 50 bystanders surrounded us and Det. Wormington called for additional Officers while I held down Cartwright.” Police officers were arresting bad boy Ricky Cartwright Read More…
by Naja and Arnaud Girard 8:30 on a Saturday morning. It’s already hot and with no AC in the car it’s going to get a whole lot hotter by the time we get into Miami. At her mother’s tiny apartment on Olivia Street, Mary Annuylsse is getting 3-year old Kaeden Murphy ready to go see Read More…
by Naja and Arnaud Girard According to some irritated homeowners, two lower Florida Keys sewage treatment plant operators are playing dirty tricks in their permit applications to inject over a million gallons a day of sewage into shallow injection wells on Cudjoe Key and Stock Island. They claim that FKAA is using unrealistic old data Read More…
by Naja and Arnaud Girard Whether ‘Old Man Chapman’ will finally be swindled out of his house is no longer up for debate. Last Monday a red 8” X 6” legal notice was taped to his door at 221 Petronia Street. It read: “Final Notice of Eviction” and directed the Monroe County Sheriff to remove Read More…
by Naja and Arnaud Girard Conspiracy theories are running wild over the City Commission’s decision to give control of the African-Caribbean Goombay Festival to a group dominated by white businessmen. “This decision was a slap in the face,” says Glenwood Lopez. He is Chairman of a group supported by eleven Bahama Village non-profit organizations that Read More…
Wouldn’t it be great if we could all believe that Charles Eimers’ death was just an accident – somehow the 61-year-old tourist was simply a ‘walking heart attack’ and when police tried to arrest him he stressed out and his heart gave up. We have a few questions about the final autopsy report: 1. What Read More…
by Arnaud and Naja Girard This is the first in a series of articles on affordable housing and homelessness in Key West and the Florida Keys. We will try to look past the anti-homeless rhetoric burning through local media and show you what is really happening on the Keys housing front. In future articles we Read More…
by Naja and Arnaud Girard Sore throats, red eyes, Old Town storeowners worried about the smell of smoke on their garments, sailboats evacuated… One way or another a lot of people were affected last week by the fire raging on Wisteria Island. The Key West Fire Department had given up the fight on Monday and Read More…
Naja and Arnaud Girard There’s finally an explanation as to why nothing was done to keep the Tug Tilly from sinking. A lot has been said and written about the Tug Tilly: the controversial sale of a 150-ton scrapyard-ready tugboat to a homeless man, its subsequent floundering while abandoned two miles south of Key West Read More…
by Naja and Arnaud Girard The storm forecasted for Thursday of last week arrived during the night. For those who knew of the Tug Tilly, the gusts of wind unraveling through the trees on the island meant that a few miles offshore, in the dark of night, completely exposed to the waves building against the Read More…