Category: Crime and Public Safety

A South Florida pain management doctor was convicted at trial for illegally prescribing pain pills to most patients at his clinic without any legitimate medical basis and sometimes without examining them at all, prosecutors said Thursday. Osmin Morales, 72, of Weston, is licensed in Florida as a medical doctor who is authorized to prescribe controlled substances at his clinic in Miami-Dade County and has been practicing since 1997, state Department of Health records show. The jury found him guilty on Jan. 12 after a seven-day trial of conspiracy to unlawfully dispense and distribute controlled...

The street was quiet. Only the sound of crickets chirping could be heard — until more than a dozen gunshots broke the silence. The Broward Sheriff’s Office released home surveillance video Tuesday that includes the moment unidentified suspects arrived at a vacation rental home in Wilton Manors and shot and killed 44-year-old Arland Cata. The Sheriff’s Office said in a news release detectives are hoping to generate new leads. Shortly before 11 p.m. Sept. 10, surveillance video from a home near the vacation rental in the 500 block of Northwest 28th Court recorded a car parked outside with the...

WEST PALM BEACH (CBS12) — A horrific scene unfolded at a gas station in West Palm Beach about 9:30 a.m. Tuesday when children were left unattended in a car with a loaded gun. According to West Palm Beach Police, a mother of four left her children in the car to go inside a RaceTrac gas station off 45th Street. While she was inside the store, her 10-year-old son rummaged through the center console and found a loaded semi-automatic Glock. West Palm Beach Police Department Spokesman Mike Jachles said the gun was fired, hitting one of the siblings, an 8-year-old girl, in the cheek. Two other children,...

Three people charged with playing crucial roles in a South Florida nursing-school “diploma mill” were found guilty by a federal jury Friday, after a three-week trial where prosecutors accused the defendants of corrupting the healthcare field. Prosecutors said that more than 3,500 students paid between $10,000 and $20,000 for bogus academic credentials from the defunct Palm Beach School of Nursing — after Florida regulators had shut it down in 2018 — so they could sit for licensing exams in New York and gain employment in the healthcare field without proper training. After six hours of deliberations,...

For the family of a UPS driver shot to death during a standoff between two robbers and about 10 times as many police officers, justice has been delayed too long. Frank Ordonez, 27, was kidnapped by two men after a failed robbery attempt at a jewelry store in Coral Gables on Dec. 5, 2019. The men led police on a 30-mile chase that ended at a Miramar intersection, where a shootout ensued during rush hour. Police officers from various South Florida agencies reportedly fired about 200 bullets. Those who died were not only the two robber-kidnappers, but Ordonez and another man, Richard Cutshaw, 70,...

A man was robbed of his wallet and shot in the leg by an unidentified suspect in Fort Lauderdale, and then he drove himself to a nearby police station for help. The police department released video of the suspect Wednesday night who has been unidentified since the shooting in June. The victim, a transportation driver, was working on the afternoon of June 20 in the 300 block of Northwest 17th Avenue, waiting to pick up a customer. He was parked in the area waiting for a client when a man approached his window with a gun and demanded money, according to an incident report. He didn’t have any cash,...