It’s Thursday, June 30th – and NBC 6 has the top stories for the day.
No. 1 - Police are still searching for a driver who fled the scene of a fiery hit-and-run crash in North Bay Village that left three dead as neighbors identified the victims as a mother and her two daughters.
Multiple people who live in the building with the victims have identified them as Cynthia Orsatelliz and her daughters, Sofia and Maria. Their building manager, Eddie Lim, said the family had moved from Dubai to North Bay Village just over a year ago. The crash happened around 9:30 p.m. Monday on the 79th Street Causeway at the entrance to Harbor Island. A driver's dash camera captured the crash and showed the victims' car apparently trying to make a turn when another vehicle slammed into them, causing a massive fireball.
No. 2 - The Broward Sheriff's Office is investigating anti-Semitic pamphlets that were left at several Parkland homes on Tuesday.
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Officials said they were alerted by a resident in the 6700 block of Northwest 63rd Way who'd found a baggie containing an anti-Semitic pamphlet and corn kernels on her driveway. "Deputies discovered that baggies with similar hate speech directed at people of the Jewish faith were left at several other homes in the neighborhood," BSO said in a statement. "The pamphlets referenced gun control and immigration and showed the faces of prominent politicians with the Star of David on their foreheads." BSO's Threat Management Unit is trying to determine who left the pamphlets. Police in Miami and Coral Gables said Tuesday that they were also investigating anti-Semitic flyers found by residents.
No. 3 - Cellphone video showed decapitated and dying animals that a witness says were sacrificed by two men on a South Florida beach.
Elisa Alonso recorded the carnage that was left behind on the public beach in Virginia Key. She said the animals — who were dying or in distress — were being sacrificed and tossed into the water as offerings. On the shore were butchered or barely alive birds, pigeons and chickens. Their blood was splattered on rocks and sand. Alonso owns the Virginia Key Outdoor Center. She said the two men slaughtering the animals were practicing Santería. Alonso was able to take a picture of the license plate the men were driving in. Miami-Dade Police charged one of them, Dany Machado Gomez of Hialeah.
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No. 4 - Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer will officially step down from the bench at 12 p.m. ET Thursday.
Breyer confirmed he would be relinquishing his duties as justice in a letter to President Joe Biden on Wednesday. “It has been my great honor to participate as a judge in the effort to maintain our Constitution and the Rule of Law," he wrote. Federal Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson was confirmed in April to succeed the 83-year-old. Brown, who was raised in Miami, will be the first Black woman on the court when she is sworn in at midday Thursday.
No. 5 - Streets across the state of Florida are set to get much quieter on Friday when a new law goes into effect. Beginning July 1, drivers can receive a fine of up to $114 for blasting music in their cars.
The new law allows officers to ticket those playing music audible from a minimum 25-foot distance. For reference, the average car is about 15 feet long, making it within the statute for an officer to ticket the driver in front of them if their music is audible. These regulations become even stricter within close proximity of churches, schools and hospitals. To many, this law produces positive change for the comfort, safety and well-being of Floridians. On the flip side, many drivers are not pleased with the statute, deeming it "a new revenue device for all law enforcement agencies in the state."
No. 6 - Katya Galbis said it has taken her more than six months to get her car fixed after a car crash — and said the delay is no fault of her own.
Instead, she said an issue with the other driver’s insurance is responsible for the delay. The nutritionist, who has made appearances on our sister network Telemundo, was in a crash in September. The crash report said the other driver failed to stop and was cited for careless driving. But Galbis said though she was not at fault, getting the other driver’s insurance to pay for her repairs hasn’t been easy. Click here for more in a report from NBC 6 consumer investigator Sasha Jones.
