It’s Friday, August 5th - and NBC 6 has the top stories for the day.
No. 1 - Roses that had been brought to honor love on that Valentine's Day in 2018 lay withered, their dried and cracked petals scattered across classroom floors still smeared with the blood of victims gunned down by a former student more than four years earlier.
Bullet holes pocked walls and shards of glass from windows shattered by gunfire crunched eerily underfoot at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where shooter Nikolas Cruz murdered 14 students and three staff members. Nothing was unchanged, except for the removal of the victims' bodies and some personal items. The 12 jurors and 10 alternates who will decide whether Cruz gets the death penalty or life in prison made a rare visit to the scene Thursday, tracing the gunman's steps through the three-story freshman building, known as “Building 12.” After they left, a group of journalists was allowed in for a much quicker first public view.
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No. 2 - Hollywood Police released violent video of three people attacking a man who was already on the ground in Hollywood Beach.
According to the police, the victim was kicked and punched repeatedly by two men and a woman over cutting a bathroom line. Cell phone video shows a man in red shorts kicking the victim in his face and knocking his head to the ground. Police said it happened in June near Tyler Street and North Broadwalk. Investigators said the victim and his wife were in line waiting to use the public bathroom when two couples cut the line. After the two couples cut the line that's when the arguing started, leading to a fight.
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No. 3 - The owner of a pit bull that attacked a pregnant woman and her dog in Fort Lauderdale is apologizing for the attack.
“I feel bad. I really do," Miguel Ruben Rohloff told NBC 6. "... That was a little dog, and I thought, oh my God, and I saw the scar." Danielle Lowell and her Jack Russell, Messi, were attacked on Davie Boulevard on Monday. Rohloff called the violent attack an accident. “I held my dog like this and I let her go by me. It seemed like she got too close and Zoie (the pit bull) went crazy. She slipped out of the leash," Rohloff said.
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No. 4 - A couple was arrested last week after police said they left their child inside a car while drinking at the Clevelander hotel on Miami Beach.
Clevelander Security guard Howard Bryan managed to point out something wasn’t quite right that early morning on July 24. “I noticed a guy kept running in and out of our exit. I explained to the guy, like, 'look, you’re going to end up getting left out,' and then he was like, 'no, I’m just going in and out to check on my baby,' and I was like, your baby?" Bryan told NBC 6 on Thursday. "He said, 'yeah, my truck is right here with the windows down with the baby in the back seat,' and I was like, 'bro, you in a club, like go handle your child,' and then he was like 'no, my wife is in here.'"
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No. 5 - The volatility in Florida's property insurance market is showing no signs of easing up.
Just this month, Demotech, an insurance rating agency, withdrew its financial stability ratings for FedNat and Weston Property and Casualty Insurance, two companies based in South Florida. "Typically that is a sign that a company is headed toward receivership and liquidation based on our history here in Florida," said Mark Friedlander of the Insurance Information Institute. Friedlander said FedNat has asked to transfer its 84,000 policyholders to another company.
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No. 6 - The Humane Society of Broward County is on its way back home to Fort Lauderdale with more than 40 beagles as part of the organization's mission to remove beagles from a controversial mass-breeding facility.
The organization wants to remove over 4,000 beagles currently housed at an Envigo RMS LLC facility in Cumberland, Virginia "which bred dogs to be sold to laboratories for animal experimentation," according to the organization in a statement. This removal of these beagles from the Virginia facility will take place in the next two months and the dogs will be up for adoption via several shelters across the country including the one in Broward County. The first group of beagles arrived in Broward early Friday morning.
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