It’s Monday, August 22nd – and NBC 6 has the top stories for the day.
No. 1 - The prosecution spent three weeks telling jurors how Nikolas Cruz murdered 14 students and three staff members at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School four years ago. Now his attorneys will get their chance to present why they believe he did it, hoping to get him sentenced to life without parole instead of death.
Melisa McNeill, Cruz's lead public defender, is expected to give her opening statement Monday, having deferred its presentation from the start of the trial a month ago. She and her team will then begin laying out their 23-year-old client's life history: his birth mother's abuse of alcohol and cocaine during her pregnancy, leading to possible fetal alcohol syndrome; his severe mental and emotional problems; his alleged sexual abuse by a “trusted peer;” the bullying he endured; and his adoptive father's death when he was 5 and his adoptive mother's four months before his Feb. 14, 2018, attack at Parkland's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
No. 2 - A Miami Police Department officer has been arrested for DUI and possession of cocaine, according to an arrest report.
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On Sunday, August 21, investigators with the Miami Police Department Anti-Corruption Unit conducted surveillance in the case of 32-year-old Jeffrey Jose Marcano. The arrest affidavit said Marcano parked his car and entered a restaurant called the D-Dog House. As he walked out, Marcano was seen holding a clear cup with what appeared to be beer. The affidavit states that Marcano sat outside the establishment with other men and drank from the cup and later entered the restaurant and came out with a glass beer bottle and continued drinking. Detectives noticed he was fidgeting and placing his hand in front of his front right pocket after intervening and found two small clear plastic bags of cocaine. Marcano was then arrested and suspended without pay pending the criminal outcome.
No. 3 - South Florida voters looking to cast their ballots before Tuesday's primary election day had until this weekend to do so.
Broward and Miami-Dade are among the counties in Florida that ended early voting this weekend. The Democratic primary for Governor pits U.S. Rep. Charlie Crist, a former governor as a Republican, against Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, who is currently Florida’s only statewide elected Democrat. The winner will face Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis in November. Democratic U.S. Rep. Val Demings is running against three little-known, underfunded candidates for her party’s nomination to face Republican U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, who has no primary challenger.
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No. 4 - OnlyFans model Courtney Clenney, who’s facing a murder charge in the killing of boyfriend Christian Obumseli inside a luxury Miami apartment in April, is in a Hawaii jail awaiting extradition to Miami-Dade County.
Meanwhile, her defense attorneys appeared before a Miami-Dade County judge Friday to withdraw a motion requesting an independent medical examiner. Defense attorney Frank Prieto said they will not be asking to exhume Obumseli’s body because they just found out his body is buried in Texas. Exhuming the body would have been extremely painful for the Obumseli family, says their attorney, Larry Hanfield. Recently released elevator video shows a tumultuous relationship between the couple in the months before Obumseli’s killing.
No. 5 - As Florida International University marks its 50th anniversary, it’s taking major strides to transform itself into a destination campus, one in which students live, study and play.
The university is investing in new on-campus housing just as rents for off-campus apartments have gone way up. The brand-new Tamiami Hall is ready for its first residents. Tamiami Hall, with room for 693 residents, is part of FIU’s effort to give students an affordable place to live and create a campus community, for $4,300 per semester. 4,400 students currently live on the main FIU campus. In the next few years, that number will grow dramatically as the university builds more housing and as private, student-focused apartment buildings open up directly across the street, thousands more students will be living campus-adjacent. Click here for more in a report from NBC 6’s Ari Odzer.
No. 6 - For South Floridians, kayaking is an activity that many have participated in at least once, but few can say they've done it under a full moon.
The Virginia Key Outdoor Center has been offering a full moon kayak tour once a month for the last seven years. The tour launches you off into the lagoon near the center and depending on how large the group is, there can be a few guides to lead the group on the journey. The tour welcomes kayakers of all levels, including first-timers to the activity. Frank Fernandez, who has been kayaking for over 20 years and is a guide for the full moon tour, said he loves when people are a little hesitant at first, because when they see the Miami skyline, their worries disappear. Click here for more in a report from NBC6.com’s Alex Ciccarone.
