FSU PC officials offer counseling as community grieves after deadly shooting
On Friday, FSU Panama City's campus attempted to return to normal while providing support to its students.
Thursday evening, students hosted a candlelight gathering in solidarity with their fellow Seminoles.
FSU PC classes continued as scheduled on Friday, with in-house counselors speaking with students. Officials want students to know there are mental health resources available.
Gov. Ron DeSantis announced flags flown at half-staff for FSU victims
'Immediately, immediately, when we heard the news, we sent the message out to our students, not only to our students, but to our faculty and staff, because people know a lot of people in Tallahassee, but specifically for our students. But we do have our own in-house mental health counselor, specialist,' FSU PC Associate Dean Irvin Clark said.
'Our priority is the safety and well-being of our students, our FSU family. So having those services available is a critical part of processing and of healing from what's gone on. You look at these things happening nationwide, but when it hits in your backyard, I think students are feeling a sense of grief, a sense that it's really close to home,' FSU PC Director of Student Affairs Tim Kessler-Cleary said.
FSU PC is also in the process of hiring a second mental health counselor.
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CBS News
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Florida execution set for today would set record for most executions there in single year, 9
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Associated Press
15 hours ago
- Associated Press
Florida set to execute man for killing wife, 2 kids in new state death sentence record for 1 year
STARKE, Fla. (AP) — A Florida man convicted of killing his wife and two children with a machete in 1994 is set for execution Thursday, which would be the ninth death sentence carried out in 2025 to set a new state record for a single year. A 10th execution is scheduled for Aug. 19 and an 11th on Aug. 28. A death warrant signed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis directs that 60-year-old Edward Zakrzewski be executed by lethal injection at 6 p.m. Thursday at Florida State Prison near Starke. Zakrzewski's final appeal for a stay was rejected Wednesday by the U.S. Supreme Court. The highest previous annual total of recent Florida executions is eight in 2014, since the death penalty was restored in 1976 by the U.S. Supreme Court. Florida has executed more people than any other state this year, while Texas and South Carolina are tied for second place with four each. Zakrzewski, an Air Force veteran, was sentenced to die for the 1994 slayings of his 34-year-old wife, Sylvia, and their children Edward, 7, and 5-year-old Anna, at their home in Okaloosa County in the Panhandle. Trial testimony showed he committed the killings after his wife sought a divorce, and he had told others he would kill his family rather than allow that. Sylvia was attacked first with a crowbar and strangled with a rope, testimony shows. Both children were killed with the machete, and Sylvia was also struck with the blade when Zakrzewski thought she had survived the previous assault. Opponents of the execution point to Zakrzewski's military service and the fact that a jury voted 7-5 to recommend his execution, barely a majority of the panel. He could not be executed with such a split jury vote under current state law. The trial judge imposed three death sentences on Zakrzewski. The Action Network, which organized an anti-execution petition, asked people to call DeSantis' office and read a prepared script urging a stay of execution for Zakrzewski. 'Florida does not need the death penalty to be safe. This execution will not make us safer, it will simply add another act of violence to an already tragic story. Justice does not require death,' the script reads in part. Zakrzewski's lawyers have filed numerous appeals over the years, all of which have been rejected. Twenty-six men have died by court-ordered execution so far this year in the U.S., and 11 other people are scheduled to be put to death in seven states during the remainder of 2025. Florida was also the last state to execute someone, when Michael Bernard Bell died by lethal injection on July 15. DeSantis also signed a warrant for the 10th execution this year for Kayle Bates, who abducted a woman from an insurance office and killed her more than four decades ago. Wednesday night, DeSantis issued a death warrant for Curtis Windom, 59, convicted of killing three people in the Orlando area in 1992. His execution is scheduled for Aug. 28. Florida uses a three-drug cocktail for its lethal injection: a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heart, according to the state Department of Corrections.


CBS News
a day ago
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Continuing to quickly order executions, Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday signed a death warrant for a man convicted of killing three people in 1992 in Orange County. Curtis Windom, 59, is scheduled to be executed Aug. 28 at Florida State Prison, according to the death warrant posted on the Florida Supreme Court website. Windom could be the 11th inmate executed this year in the state — a record-breaking pace. The state is scheduled Thursday to execute Edward Zakrzewski for the 1994 murders of his wife and two children in Okaloosa County, and DeSantis has signed a death warrant to execute Kayle Barrington Bates on Aug. 19 for the 1982 murder of a woman in Bay County. Zakrzewski's attorneys have gone to the U.S. Supreme Court to try to halt his execution. But if he is put to death by lethal injection, the state would break a modern-era record of eight executions in a year. That record was set in 1984 and 2014 and represents the period after the death penalty was reinstated in 1976 after a U.S. Supreme Court decision halted executions four years earlier. As with the earlier executions, the Windom death warrant and supporting documents were posted Tuesday on the Florida Supreme Court website without additional explanation from DeSantis. But one of the documents, a letter from Attorney General James Uthmeier to DeSantis, outlined the Windom shootings on Feb. 7, 1992. The document said Windom claimed that victim Johnnie Lee owed him $2,000. After finding out that Lee had won $114 at a greyhound track, Windom bought a .38-caliber revolver and ammunition. "Minutes later, Windom drove his car next to where Lee was standing and shot Lee twice in the back," the document said. "He then got out of the car and shot Lee two more times at close range as Lee lay on the ground." It said Windom then ran toward the apartment of what the document described as his "on-again-off-again girlfriend," Valerie Davis, and fatally shot her. After Davis' mother, Mary Lubin, learned that her daughter had been shot, she left work and was driving down the street. "When she stopped at a stop sign, Windom approached her car, said something to her, and then shot her twice, killing her," the Uthmeier document said. Another man, Kenneth Williams, was wounded in the shooting spree but survived. The state this year has executed Michael Bell on July 15; Thomas Gudinas on June 24; Anthony Wainwright on June 10; Glen Rogers on May 15; Jeffrey Hutchinson on May 1; Michael Tanzi on April 8; Edward James on March 20; and James Ford on Feb. 13.