Top Local News Stories for Minneola, Florida.

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Seminole County firefighter vanishes in Maine

Police in Maine are looking for a missing Florida firefighter who hasn't been seen in almost a week. Authorities say 31-year-old Jerry Perdomo, of Orange City, Fla., drove a rental car from Florida to Bangor, where it was found abandoned on Friday morning in a Walmart parking lot. He was last seen wearing a back zip-up hooded sweat shirt, shorts and black sneakers. He is described as 5 feet 11 inches tall, about 200 pounds, with black hair and brown eyes. A colleague tells the Bangor Daily News that Perdomo is a firefighter and emergency medical technician for the Seminole County Fire Department who did not show up for work as scheduled on Sunday. He was going to Maine to visit a friend.

Published: Wed, 22 Feb 2012 12:39:35 GMT

Crash blocks Interstate 95 in Brevard County

A fiery crash involving two tractor-trailers blocked Interstate 95 on Wednesday morning in Brevard County, causing a major traffic jam. The crash happened about 6 a.m. in the southbound lanes of I-95 at mile marker 169 near Malabar Road. All southbound lanes of I-95 are blocked in the area, and traffic is getting by on the shoulder. Firefighters said two tractor-trailers, one carrying baking supplies and the other pipe, were involved in the crash, and one of the big rigs caught fire. Both drivers were seen outside of their vehicles, and there were no reports of serious injuries. Officials said the interstate may not fully open for several hours. Watch Local 6 News for more on this story.

Published: Wed, 22 Feb 2012 13:47:16 GMT

America's 20 most miserable cities

Drugs. Violence. Unemployment. Is your community one of the 20 most miserable cities in America?

Published: Tue, 21 Feb 2012 16:29:37 GMT

Remember these? Greatest fads ever!

They're the world's greatest fads, but how many of them did you play with? Don't be too embarrassed to count... click ahead and dive into your past.

Published: Tue, 11 Jan 2011 23:22:13 GMT

Lake County man shot in head

A man was shot in the head Tuesday night inside a Lake County home, deputies said. The shooting happened at a home near the intersection of Center Street and Disston Avenue. Deputies said the shooting appears to be accidental. According to a man who lives at the home, the victim was accidentally shot while a neighbor was showing off a handgun. The homeowner said the bullet grazed the victim's head before it went through a wall and into a bedroom. The victim was taken to South Lake Hospital, but he was not seriously injured, according to the homeowner. A man was taken into custody at the shooting scene. The homeowner said the shooter was on probation for a previous conviction.

Published: Wed, 22 Feb 2012 11:52:40 GMT

Disney rolls out new Magic Kingdom game

A new game is being rolled out Wednesday at Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom, and kids as young as 3 years old can enjoy it. Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom is an interactive card game in which players will battle villains who are trying to take over the theme park. But perhaps the most magical thing about the role-playing game is that it leads Disney guests on a journey around the park without having to wait in line. Sometimes, waits for rides can be up to 90 minutes. "Wait is as much about perception as it is about time," said Jim MacPhee, senior vice president of Walt Disney World Parks. "We want to bring the great perception and a great experience that our guests are immersed in the story every step of the way." Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom is just one of many things Disney has done to offer entertainment without wait times. Imagineers have been working to take the stories from some of their most popular rides and bring them out into the queues. "It's really about peeling it back layer after layer and letting guests get as deep as they want to into the story but really walk away with a rich experience," MacPhee said. Reports say Imagineers spent four years working on the game and there are almost 100 original animations in it.

Published: Wed, 22 Feb 2012 12:27:26 GMT

Mentor not guilty in 'Boot camp' video trial

A jury found the mentor accused of hitting a 7-year-old boy with a belt, shaving his hair and eyebrows and making him do military-style exercises not guilty of child abuse Tuesday night. Devery Broox, 25, of Orlando, was charged last year with child abuse after being accused of posting a video of the discipline on the Internet. The discipline was apparently in reaction to the boy, who is now 8, misbehaving in school. On the stand, Broox testified he had permission from the boy's great-grandmother to discipline the child, but said he never told her he was spanking the boy. He also said the great-grandmother asked him to shave the boy's head and eyebrows to treat a skin fungus. When the boy was acting up in school, Broox said he told him the shaving was punishment, instead of telling him his great-grandmother told him to. Broox said of the 17 or 18 "licks" the boy received, he administered about eight. He said the rest were given by a friend of Broox. The boy told the jury Brooz was a "mentor brother" who took him to the park, skating and played tennis. He said Broox would discipline him if he "didn't act right at school" for an example, throwing crayons at other students. In the video, Broox can be heard saying, "Let's go. Drop your pants. So when I told you to go back to school and behave yourself and you went back (and) just did what you want to and just played in class, that wasn't saying, '(Expletive) me?'" In the video, Broox can be seen shaving the boy's head, telling him he couldn't grow his hair back until he behaved. The boy said the video made him feel "sad and disappointed, because everybody saw it." On the day of the video, the boy said Broox made him do exercises, then spanked him, "whooped" him with a belt. Broox told jurors that he wanted to influence others to become mentors. "The problem is, I definitely went the wrong route about doing it," Brooks said. The Department of Children and Families, however, said the fact that Broox was not the boy's father further proved that he was out of line. "We were quite concerned with the content that was in there, given that the individual is not the caretaker, as far as the child does not live with that individual," DCF spokeswoman Carrie Hoeppner told Local 6 in November. The child's grandmother told police the boy needed a "mentor," a role filled by Broox. "I didn't give him permission to physically strike him, but I did ask him to correct him," the victim's great grandmother said. She said she didn't have a problem if he spanked the boy. Check back with Local 6 and ClickOrlando.com for more information.

Published: Wed, 22 Feb 2012 04:13:34 GMT

TSA exaggerates claims about 2008 incident at OIA

Federal officials exaggerated and misstated facts surrounding an aviation terrorism scare at Orlando International Airport, as they attempted to defend and expand an expensive anti-terrorism program that has yet to find a confirmed terrorist, a Local 6 investigation has found. The Transportation Security Administration has repeatedly cited the 2008 arrest of a man carrying "all of the components for an explosive device" at OIA as an example of the effectiveness of its $250-million-a-year behavior detection program. The agency claims its behavior detection officers (BDOs) were able to intercept Kevin Christopher Brown on April 1, 2008 through careful examination of his involuntary behavior – subtle cues of deception exhibited by possible terrorists that BDOs are specially trained to recognize. But a Local 6 investigation raises doubts about both claims, which TSA has repeated to the public and Congress as it tries to justify its employment of more than 3,000 BDOs in a nearly five-year-old program that has never nabbed a real terrorist. Most glaringly, it turns out there were "no initiators, explosives or exploding devices" in Brown’s luggage, according to an August 8, 2008 FBI laboratory report. Yet the TSA in 2010 continued to claim its behavior detection officers in Orlando "spotted an individual who was discovered to have explosive components." That comment, reported by the Associated Press, came as the agency defended itself from a critical Government Accountability Office report. It found no evidence the program did better at identifying lawbreakers in airports than would a random selection of people passing through terminals. The government’s own explosives experts had by then determined the two bottles of model rocket fuel, pipes, end caps and batteries in Brown’s luggage were not explosives and could not have been assembled into an explosive device. While the diluted fuel was flammable, it was not explosive-grade material and there was no initiator, such as a blasting cap, among the materials, which is a necessary component to an explosive device, according to FBI experts. Moreover, the FBI lab concluded, the pipes and end caps "would serve no useful role in the construction of an improvised incendiary device" in conjunction with the other materials in the luggage. Local 6 found the misstatements of fact by government officials reached the highest level of the Department of Homeland Security, which includes TSA. In April 2008, then-Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told Congress behavioral detection officers in Orlando found "all of the components for an explosive device" after searching Brown’s bag – a bag, the FBI later confirmed, contained neither explosives nor the initiator needed to create an explosion. Chertoff also testified the TSA officers detected Brown "behaving in a suspicious way." But any suggestion it took trained TSA professionals to detect Brown’s strange behavior is refuted by witnesses who say symptoms of his mental illness were obvious to anyone who saw him at the airport that day. Brown had been involuntarily committed to a mental health unit two months earlier, after repeated threats and at least one attempt to commit suicide, according to court records. He was also prescribed medication for mental illness. Passengers waiting with Brown to check in to Air Jamaica Flight 80 to Montego Bay noticed his strange behavior and, according to Brown’s attorney, alerted airline staff. “A passenger at some point had talked to the counter persons and expressed concern about his demeanor,” said attorney Wayne Golding. "He looked rather crazy, actually," one of the passengers told Local 6 the day of the incident. "He was rocking left to right, almost up and sound, you know, kind of wacko." A TSA employee, who asked not to be identified, confirmed Brown was acting out emotionally for all to see. "Kind of back and forth, looking around, sweating when it really wasn’t that hot, just acting real weird," the TSA employee said. "So you don’t have to actually have any type of particular training for that. Anyone can pretty much see that." TSA’s trumpeting of the Brown case bothers U.S. Rep. John Mica (R-Winter Park), a frequent critic of the agency. "Using a failure or purporting to do something they haven't done is inappropriate," Mica told Local 6. He said the GAO report found the TSA program has never resulted in the detention of a terrorist, even though 16 of them at some point passed through airports where the officers were deployed. "Terrorists continue to target the aviation sector. TSA won't say whether we've caught actual terrorists," a TSA spokeswoman said. "Many of the cases that resulted in arrests remain under active investigation by law enforcement. We may not know if the people (the program) caught in the country illegally, using fake passports or IDs or smuggling money or drugs were doing so to assist with a larger plot. But it's clearly an effective means of identifying people engaged in activity that may threaten the security of the passengers and the airports and has become a very effective intelligence tool, enabling law enforcement to bust larger operations and track any trends in nefarious activity.” TSA declined to provide to Local 6 specifics about when it detected Brown or when it may have been contacted by passengers or airport employees about his strange behavior. Golding said his client is "a poster child, but a poster child for the wrong reasons … They're spending a lot of money that has to be justified and this was a perfect example for them to say, look, it's working, we found a terrorist." Not only was Brown not a terrorist, but the TSA worker who spoke to Local 6 said his luggage - even with the flammable liquid inside it - was not a threat. "By it not being with him, then it wouldn't be a danger to anyone because he didn't have any type of connection to the bag," the worker said. The model rocket fuel, securely sealed in two plastic vodka bottles, could have ignited if flames or some other igniter penetrated the suitcase and its contents in the plane’s cargo hold, explosives experts reported. But, of course, in such a scenario the plane would already be in peril. Brown was originally indicted on charges of attempting to place "an explosive and an incendiary device" on a plane, charges that carry up to 20 years in federal prison. But in June 2009, nearly 17 months after his arrest and detention, the U.S. Attorney finally conceded it could not prove that and decided to charge Brown with a misdemeanor: attempting to circumvent an airport security system - akin, Golding said, to sneaking a cigarette lighter on board a plane at a time when they were banned. By the time he was sentenced in October 2009, Brown had already been in custody longer than the one-year maximum for the misdemeanor. A judge gave him three years probation. Unlike the media and bureaucratic attention that surrounded him when he was charged, no one was publicizing the day he walked out of the Orlando federal courthouse cleared of any suggestion he introduced an explosive onto a plane. But Golding said the damage was done. "My client's face was plastered all over the world and people will probably just remember him as the guy who tried to bring a bomb on Air Jamaica," said Golding. "And that is so far from the truth." Brown, an Army veteran who returned to Iraq as a contractor after his honorable discharge in 2005, declined to comment to Local 6. Last month, Brown was back in federal court, this time in Fort Lauderdale, charged with violating the conditions of his probation by being arrested for petit theft. As a cashier at Ross Dress for Less, he failed to scan about $300 in merchandise for a customer whom he allowed to walk out of the store. "Please don’t put me back in prison, your honor," Brown said. "It would just destroy everything I’ve been working on." Noting he had already been spared prison after a 2010 DUI arrest, the judge sentenced Brown to three months in federal prison.

Published: Wed, 22 Feb 2012 02:18:59 GMT

Singer's gesture overshadows prizes at Brit Awards

Singing sensation Adele continued rolling in the prizes at the Brit Awards in London, but she made headlines Wednesday for something else: she gave the middle finger when she was cut off during the live broadcast. The British star, who raked in six Grammys last week, won best album at the Brits for "21," which featured the hit single "Rolling in the Deep." But when Brit host James Corden cut her speech short Tuesday night, she made the rude gesture. Adele, Corden and the station that broadcast the awards all issued apologies of one kind or another after the incident. The singer said backstage that she "flung the middle finger. But that finger was to the suits at the Brit Awards, not to my fans. "I was about to thank the British public for their support and they cut me off," she said. "Sorry if I offended anyone, but the suits offended me." Corden, the comedian who hosted the show, later said, "Can't believe i was told to cut off the amazing Adele at the end. #Livetvnightmare," on Twitter. ITV, the broadcaster, apologized to Adele for cutting her off. "The Brits is a live event, sadly the program was over-running and we had to move on," a statement from ITV said. "We would like to apologize to Adele for the interruption. ... We don't want this to undermine her incredible achievement in winning her incredible award." Last week the 23-year old won all six Grammys she was nominated for, including album of the year.

Published: Wed, 22 Feb 2012 12:03:27 GMT

8 Decades of Oscars' best leading men

With his Best Actor Oscar win, Jeff Bridges becomes the 74th different actor to capture the award. Take a look back at the other winners since 1929.

Published: Wed, 15 Jun 2011 18:41:18 GMT

Orlando-area mug shot hall of shame

UPDATED DAILY: Here's a look at some of the individuals who have been arrested recently in Central Florida.

Published: Tue, 19 Apr 2011 16:11:24 GMT

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