Man arrested for animal cruelty after dog found tied to post in floodwaters ahead of Hurricane Milton
Florida Highway Patrol
(TAMPA, FL) — The former owner of a dog that was left tied to a post off a Florida highway in floodwaters ahead of Hurricane Milton’s landfall has been arrested for animal cruelty, officials announced Tuesday.
The dog was found up to its chest in floodwaters off Interstate 75 in Tampa on Oct. 9, as many residents were evacuating due to Milton, according to the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles.
A state trooper rescued the dog, now known as Trooper, the department said. Florida Highway Patrol shared a video on social media last week of the dog tied to the post with the caption, “Do NOT do this to your pets please…”
The former owner of the dog — identified by the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles as Giovanny Aldama Garcia, 23, of Ruskin, Florida — was arrested on Monday for aggravated animal cruelty, a felony.
State Attorney Suzy Lopez, whose office is prosecuting the case, also announced the arrest on Tuesday, saying, “We take this crime very seriously and this defendant will face the consequences of his actions.”
Aldama Garcia was released Tuesday on $2,500 cash bond, according to online jail records. ABC News’ attempts to reach him were unsuccessful. Online court records do not list any attorney information.
(NEW YORK) — Across hours of podcast and television interviews, Army veteran and Fox News host Pete Hegseth has articulated his plan for a “frontal assault” to reform the Department of Defense from the top down, including by purging “woke” generals, limiting women from some combat roles, eliminating diversity goals and utilizing the “real threat of violence” to reassert the United States as a global power.
As President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for the Secretary of Defense, Hegseth, 44, could have the chance to implement that vision, commanding the country’s more than a million active duty soldiers.
An infantry officer in the U.S. Army National Guard, Hegseth deployed to Guantanamo Bay, Iraq and Afghanistan before leaving the service with the rank of major, according to military records. Hegseth has worked for Fox News since 2014, where he co-hosts “FOX & Friends Weekend.” Once a critic of Trump’s foreign policy and military stances during Trump’s 2016 campaign, Hegseth grew to become one of Trump’s fiercest on-air defenders.
“Pete is tough, smart and a true believer in America First. With Pete at the helm, America’s enemies are on notice – Our Military will be Great Again, and America will Never Back Down,” Trump said announcing the nomination.
A New York Times best-selling author, Hegseth has frequently commented on military policy and suggested one of his first orders of business would be firing any generals who supported the Pentagon’s diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.
“First of all, you got to fire the Chairman Joint of the Chiefs and obviously going to bring in a new Secretary of Defense, but any general that was involved — general, admiral, whatever — that was involved in, any of the DEI woke s—, has got to go,” Hegseth said during a recent interview on the “Shawn Ryan Show” podcast. “Either you’re in for warfighting, and that’s it. That’s the only litmus test we care about.”
Hegseth had preemptively defended the move, saying it would be a return to normalcy for soldiers rather than a “MAGA takeover.”
While Hegseth has described countries like Russia and China as threats, he has framed the military’s biggest threat as an internal one, arguing that “wokeness” divided the military internally and created an issue that adversaries can exploit.
“I think our biggest threat is internal. I think we’re committing cultural suicide, and we’ve lost complete focus on the basics and building blocks of what made Western civilization in America exceptional, fruitful, prosperous, strong, free,” Hegseth said on the podcast.
Hegseth has proposed a wholesale purge of military officials who have supported DEI policies, urging a “frontal assault right back at what’s been done to this military from the top and to the bottom.”
“The dumbest phrase on planet Earth in the military is our diversity is our strength,” Hegseth said on the podcast, arguing that uniformity between soldiers is a key to the military’s strength.
“Every time I hear a military leader say [diversity is our strength], I throw up in my mouth a little bit more, because if they believe it, it shows you how sideways and how indoctrinated they are,” Hegseth said on “The Right Take With Mark Tapson” podcast.
While 17.5% of active-duty military personnel are women, Hegseth has argued that military leaders should acknowledge that their main constituency is “strong, normal men,” rebuffing efforts to diversify the ranks of the armed services.
“There aren’t enough lesbians in San Francisco to staff the 82nd Airborne like you need, you need the boys in Kentucky and Texas and North Carolina and Wisconsin,” Hegseth said on Tapson’s podcast earlier this year.
Hegseth was on the “Take It Outside with Jay Cutler and Sam Mackey” podcast and said that transgender soldiers are “not deployable” because they are “reliant on chemicals” and suggested that women should not serve in certain combat roles.
“Everything about men and women serving together makes the situation more complicated, and complication in combat means casualties are worse,” Hegseth said on Ryan’s podcast, arguing that men are “more capable” in combat roles because of biological factors.
An ardent defender of the president-elect, Hegseth has argued that the United States military under Trump was more effective by posing both “uncertainty” and the “real threat of violence.”
“At least under Trump, there were missiles falling on terrorists’ heads,” Hegseth said on the “Man of War” podcast with Rafa Conde. “They knew he meant business. Kim Jong Un, even though it didn’t work, knew Trump meant business. Fire and fury was a real thing. Uncertainty is a real thing. The real threat of violence is a real thing, and none of that exists under these globalists who think they can sanction their way.”
He has also criticized international institutions like the United Nations as a “farce” and “giant joke” while advocating a military policy that aims to end long-term conflicts through decisive action.
“We expect this clinically sanitized, you know, no civilian casualties. Everything’s going to be perfect. No one’s going to get hurt, everything. It’s just not how war operates, and that’s unfortunate,” Hegseth said on “The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe” podcast. “But if we try to do it with kid gloves or with surgical gloves, we’re never really going to get rid of, actually exterminate the enemies that we need to defeat to create a peace on the other side.”
(LAKELAND, Fla.) — A Florida woman was arrested and charged this week for ending a phone call with her health insurance provider with threats that mimicked wording associated with the suspected UnitedHealthcare CEO shooter.
The incident occurred Tuesday when Briana Boston, a 42-year-old woman from Lakeland, was speaking with a representative from Blue Cross Blue Shield after she had been told that her medical claim was denied.
In an arrest affidavit obtained by ABC News, police said that near the end of the recorded conversation with the insurance provider, Boston can be heard saying, “Delay, deny, depose. You people are next.”
Boston’s apparent threats nearly echo the words that were engraved on the bullet shell casings that authorities recovered from the scene where UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was fatally shot earlier this month.
Those engraved words were “deny,” “defend” and “depose.”
However, Boston’s words do match the title of a 2010 book “Delay, Deny, Defend: Why Insurance Companies Don’t Pay Claims and What You Can Do About It.”
The book was written by legal scholar and insurance expert Jay Feinman, a professor emeritus at Rutgers Law School in New Jersey. It explores abuses of auto and homeowners insurance to “avoid paying justified claims,” according to its summary.
Luigi Mangione is a suspect in the killing, which has catapulted the nation’s health care industry into the spotlight. Mangione faces second-degree murder and a slew of other charges in both Pennsylvania and New York.
When Lakeland Police confronted Boston about the perceived threats, she apologized and said that she “used those words because it’s what is in the news right now,” according to the arrest affidavit.
Boston told authorities she does not own any guns and is not a threat, but went on to say that health care companies “deserve karma” and that they are “evil,” according to the document.
“Boston further stated the health care companies played games and deserved karma from the world because they are evil,” police said in the affidavit.
ABC News has reached out to Blue Cross Blue Shield for comment.
Following the investigation, Boston was charged with threats to conduct a mass shooting or act of terrorism and booked at a jail in Polk County, according to police.
(HOUSTON) — A military veteran died after allegedly being physically attacked during an argument over a parking space outside of a Houston, Texas grocery store, according to a statement from the Harris County Sheriff’s Office.
Earl Hollins, 80, was allegedly assaulted by Anthony Ray Boyce, 57, on Friday during the disagreement in a Food Town parking lot, the HCSO said. Boyce allegedly drove away in Hollins’ car after the attack, according to the HCSO.
Hollins suffered severe head trauma, fell into a coma and was not expected to recover, his family told ABC affiliate KTRK in Houston. He was pronounced dead on Dec. 7 at a local hospital, the HCSO confirmed to ABC News.
“What he [did], it wasn’t right,” Hollins’ niece, Elma Hollins-Washington, told KTRK. “It wasn’t human.”
The HCSO said it’s investigating the altercation between Hollins and Boyce, including how the two men may have been acquainted before the incident.
“Someone was saying that he knew the guy because they always used to be around Food Town,” Hollins-Washington said, adding that the family is still in disbelief over what happened.
“I said, ‘My god, over a parking spot. You’re going to injure my uncle, and now, finally, he’s dead, and it was over a parking spot,'” Hollins-Washington said. “You took something great from us, something that we will never get over.”
According to HCSO records, Boyce is being held in the Harris County Jail on $100,000 bond, charged with aggravated assault with serious bodily injury.
Detectives will meet with the Harris County District Attorney’s Office to determine if that charge will be upgraded following Hollins’ death, the HCSO told ABC News.
