Sydney Persing

Graves dating back to the early 1900’s are becoming unearthed at Arcadia’s Oak Ridge Cemetery. A passerby believed it was vandalism when he recently saw a grave so badly degraded he saw human remains inside. But Beth Carsten, the assistant city administrator of Arcadia, said time and weather are causing the older graves to crack […]

May 6 marks National Nurses Day and the beginning of National Nurses Week. Nurses are on the front line, and they were there when Southwest Florida went through several waves of COVID-19. The nurses are there now, treating people with COVID-19, even with Lee Health reporting only 28 patients with COVID-19. The healthcare system says […]

Rallies got underway Tuesday across the nation and right here in Southwest Florida for abortion rights and women’s rights. This comes after a leaked Supreme Court draft opinion to overturn Roe v Wade. The reaction has been pouring in. President Joe Biden said, “So it goes far beyond, in my view, if it becomes a […]

Law enforcement and FBI agents take the stand to close the first week of a mass shooting trial. They’re the ones who dug through tons of video evidence and phone records from the night of the violence in July 2016 at Club Blu. Kierra Russ is on trial for murder in the shooting that killed […]

A new grant is providing training to future employees, giving candidates the skill sets they need to land a job, who otherwise wouldn’t have access to it. With glasses on and a pen in hand, Zhishan Liang looks like a typical student, but this isn’t your typical class. “It really gave me a new skill […]

When Ukrainian families escape the missiles, weapons, wreckage and fires they often land in Poland. That’s why Pastor Viktor Antipov, of House of Mercy Church in North Port, made the 5,278-mile journey from North Port to Warsaw to help Ukrainian refugees. Despite all of the loss and despair, Antipov said he heard no complaints. Antipov […]

A poll sent to Florida lawmakers to initiate a special session on property insurance failed, but Governor Ron DeSantis is calling one anyway. Homes in Florida are beautiful, but they do not come cheap to insure. “Yeah, look, I think this has had has hit critical mass, it is absolutely a crisis. I mean, I […]

New audio recordings shed new light on the investigation into a controversy at the Fort Myers Police Department. The tape reveals Chief Derrick Diggs acknowledges one person felt pressured amid allegations then-Major William Newhouse told another officer to hide cost overruns on a new police station from the city council. The internal affairs investigation began […]

The Fort Myers Police Department is now facing a lawsuit regarding its activity. On Monday, a former inspector general filed that suit against the city, FMPD, the police chief, a former major, and an investigator. All of this is regarding allegations that a former major tried to deceive city council about the actual cost of […]

An independent review of an internal affairs investigation into a former high-ranking Fort Myers police official has been completed. The internal affairs investigation looked into whether then Major William Newhouse had ordered a subordinate to lie to city council about cost overruns for a new Fort Myers Police Department headquarters at the old News-Press building […]