It’s Friday, December 3rd – and NBC 6 has the top stories for the day.
No. 1 - A Miami Beach man who fatally stabbed his co-worker after she repeatedly refused to start a relationship with him is facing a murder charge, authorities said.
Agustin Lucas Mariani, 20, is facing a second-degree murder charge in the killing of 28-year-old Delfina Pan. Mariani, who also stabbed himself in the incident, was expected to be booked into jail after his release from Jackson Memorial Hospital, Miami Beach Police officials said Thursday. According to an arrest report, Mariani and Pan worked at a local restaurant together, and Mariani had made several attempts to start a relationship with Pan, who declined his attempts. Click here for the story in a report from NBC 6’s Cristian Benavides.
No. 2 - An arrest has been made following a social media threat made against Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
Get South Florida local news, weather forecasts and entertainment stories to your inbox. Sign up for NBC South Florida newsletters.
Stoneman Douglas Principal Michelle Kefford announced the arrest in a message to parents Wednesday. Kefford said the Broward Sheriff's Office and Broward County Public Schools Special Investigative Unit immediately investigated the threat and made an arrest. Broward Sheriff's Office officials said the suspect, a juvenile, made the threat in a social media chat room. The juvenile faces one count of writing threats to conduct a mass shooting. Kefford didn't say whether the person arrested was an MSD student.
No. 3 - The omicron variant of COVID-19, which had been undetected in the U.S. before the middle of this week, had been discovered in at least five states by the end of Thursday, showing yet again how mutations of the virus can circumnavigate the globe with speed and ease.
Just a day after the first known U.S. case was found in California, tests showed the omicron variant had infected at least five people in the New York City metropolitan area, plus a man from Minnesota who had attended an anime convention in Manhattan in late November. A Colorado woman who had recently traveled to southern Africa, a Hawaii resident with no recent travel history, and another California resident who traveled to South Africa last month also were infected by the variant, officials said. Much remains unknown about omicron, including whether it is more contagious, as some health authorities suspect, whether it can thwart vaccines and whether it makes people as sick as the original strain.
Local
No. 4 - A man with a fully loaded gun got on a commercial flight was able to fly to Miami, the NBC 6 Investigators exclusively discovered — a hair-raising incident that caused the TSA to immediately trigger a probe into the security lapse that aviation experts say could have caused a disaster.
In a video the NBC 6 Investigators exclusively obtained, airline passenger Cameron Hinds is stopped at a Miami International Airport checkpoint and Miami-Dade Police take him into custody. The TSA officers found a loaded handgun in his belongings. But it’s what happened prior to the MIA checkpoint that sent the federal government’s security experts into high alert. Hinds got onto a flight coming from outside the U.S. —a situation where the TSA and airlines rely on foreign governments to run security. Hinds made his journey from Bridgetown, Barbados, to Miami on American Airlines flight 1089. During the flight, police say his Ruger revolver was with him in the cabin on the four-hour trip. Click here for the story from NBC 6 investigator Willard Shepard you’ll see Only on 6.
No. 5 - A law school in South Florida will announce on Thursday the creation of a social justice center named after Ben Crump, the Black civil rights attorney who has gained national notoriety representing victims of police brutality and vigilante violence.
The Benjamin L. Crump Center for Social Justice, housed at the St. Thomas University College of Law in Miami Gardens, aims to nurture the next generation of civil rights lawyers while also pushing more racial and gender diversity in the legal profession, school officials said. Calls for racial justice saw greater prominence in the wake of the 2020 protests over George Floyd's murder by a Minneapolis police officer. But the nation lacks a robust pipeline of social justice lawyers ready to take on such cases, said Crump, who has represented the families of Floyd, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and Breonna Taylor, among others.
No. 6 - Vivian Guzman says living in the Shenandoah neighborhood of Miami is a dream.
But there’s one nightmare she says has haunted her for more than a decade. Overgrown grass, a debris-filled yard, and a fading façade at a home on 20th Street are among the issues Guzman says she has reported to the City of Miami code compliance. Georg Ketelhohn also lives in the Shenandoah neighborhood. He says he has offered to help the home’s owner clear out the mess. With little help from the city, the neighbors called NBC 6 Responds for help. NBC 6 Responds found out the city has issued 13 code violations against the home since 2005. The home’s owner has also racked up $558,250 in fines. To find out why the city said there isn’t much more they can do, click here for the story from NBC 6 consumer investigator Sasha Jones.
