WATCH: Unmanned boat circles at high speed in Sarasota after boater thrown overboard
On Monday, members of the Sarasota Marine Unit responded to a boating incident north of the Ringling Museum regarding a boater in distress.
Man dies, 10 hurt in Clearwater ferry hit-and-run crash
The boater was thought to have fallen overboard his 26-foot Everglades vessel, leaving it spinning in circles at 40 mph.
With the help of the Coast Guard, the sheriff's office, Venice police and SeaTow, officials attempted to foul the boat's motor with tow lines. When that strategy failed, SeaTow deployed a plasma tow line to slow the boat down.
Video captured from Officer Dixon's patrol vessel shows authorities maneuvering alongside the vessel, after the situation required them to jump from their patrol boat to bring the unmanned one to a halt. Lieutenant King can be seen jumping ship and stopping the circling vessel.
WATCH: Deadly Clearwater ferry hit-and-run crash caught on camera
The unmanned boat's operator told officers he was returning the boat after the weekend's Boat Show at Marina Jack when a larger boat cut him off, according to the report. Trying to navigate the wake, the operator said he was thrown overboard.
Police said the man was not wearing a life jacket and did not use the emergency cut-off switch.
The operator only sustained minor injuries from the incident. No damage was reported for the man's boat or the responding law enforcement boats.
Sarasota police are using this situation to remind boaters to always wear a life jacket and to use their emergency engine cut-off to prevent accidents or injury.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
USA Today
3 hours ago
- USA Today
Newly released MLK files: What's in them and what's left out?
Historians assessing the trove of newly released documents are cautioning people against the idea that they contain any groundbreaking information. Among details included in a newly released trove of documents related to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.: assassin James Earl Ray took dance classes and had a penchant for using aliases based on James Bond novels, according to researchers. But likely not among the nearly a quarter million pages released by the National Archives and Administration on July 21 is anything that changes the narrative cemented when Ray pleaded guilty to King's murder in 1969, historians say. "The idea that there's some sort of secret document showing that J. Edgar Hoover did it is not how any of this works. Part of the challenge is getting the American public to understand it's nowhere near as exciting," said Michael Cohen, a University of California, Berkeley professor and author of a book on conspiracies in American politics. "By all means the government should release all the documents that they have and they should have done it 20 years ago," Cohen said. "The issue is about what our expectations are for what's going to be found." National Archives officials released the over 6,000 documents in accordance with an executive order signed by President Donald Trump in January. Officials released the documents over objections from members of the King family. The files are available for the public to read online at the National Archives website. Historians say it will take weeks to fully understand what they reveal. Trump's Jan. 23, 2025 executive order also called for the release of records related to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy. The full findings of the government investigations into the three killings have been hidden for decades, sparking wide-ranging speculation and preventing a sense of closure for many Americans. All three men were national and international icons whose assassinations — and the theories swirling around them — became the stuff of books, movies, controversy, and the pages of history itself. More: Trump's release of assassination docs opens window into nation's most debated mysteries What's in the King files? The newly released records come from the FBI's investigation of the King assassination, records the Central Intelligence Agency deemed related to the assassination and a file from the State Department on the extradition of James Earl Ray, who pleaded guilty in 1969 to murdering King. David Barrett, a historian at Villanova University, said the files will likely contain new, interesting information. But as was the case with the JFK files released in March, the material likely isn't groundbreaking. "I'm not seeing anything that strikes me as surprising," said Barrett, author of multiple books on presidents and intelligence agencies. "Unless they want to write about the investigation, I don't know that this will have an impact on the scholarship." Noteworthy in the files, Barrett said, are details concerning how the FBI connected Ray to King, how they found him and extradited him back to the U.S. from the United Kingdom, where he had fled. "It does take weeks to go through these, so there might be some important revelatory things but I doubt it," said the political science professor. "It's not exactly what people were hoping for and not what the King family was fearing." Many of the files are also illegible due to age and digitization. Archives officials said the agency was working with other federal partners to uncover records related to the King assassination and that records will be added to the website on a rolling basis. 'Now, do the Epstein files': MLK's daughter knocks Trump over records release What's not in the King files? Not among the newly released documents are details of FBI surveillance into King that historians say could include recordings agency director J. Edgar Hoover hoped to use as blackmail against the Georgia preacher. Experts say Hoover's wiretappings of King's hotel rooms, which are believed to contain evidence of infidelity, are likely what his family fears being made public. The New York Times reported the recordings remain under seal pursuant to a court order until 2027. But UC Berkeley professor Cohen said the documents likely haven't been revealed for multiple reasons. "There's claims that these are major government secrets and so whatever they might contain might be true and that's not the case," Cohen said. "Any large-scale government investigation often includes all sorts of spurious claims, hearsay evidence, things of which there's no truth and part of the reason why they get withheld is bureaucratic inertia and also the need to check their veracity." What does the FBI have to hide? Hoover's recordings might also prove a double-edged sword for the FBI, according to Cohen: "Will these files contain things that will upset the King family? That's possible. But they'll also likely reveal just how massively the FBI violated King's civil liberties." FBI agents began monitoring King in 1955, according to researchers at Stanford University. Hoover believed King was a communist and after the Georgia preacher criticized the agency's activities in the Deep South in 1964, the original FBI director began targeting King using the agency's counterintelligence program COINTELPRO, Stanford researchers said. COINTELPRO was a controversial program that a 1975 U.S. Senate investigation slammed, saying: "Many of the techniques used would be intolerable in a democratic society even if all of the targets had been involved in violent activity," the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities said in its final report. "The Bureau conducted a sophisticated vigilante operation aimed squarely at preventing the exercise of First Amendment rights of speech and association." The agency went so far as to send King a recording secretly made from his hotel room that an agent testified was aimed at destroying King's marriage, according to a 1976 U.S. Senate investigation. King interpreted a note sent with the tape as a threat to release recording unless King committed suicide, the Senate report said. MLK assassinated in Memphis, April 4, 1968 The official story of how King died is that he was killed on the balcony outside his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4, 1968. He stepped outside to speak with colleagues in the parking lot below and was shot in the face by an assassin. James Earl Ray, a 40-year-old escaped fugitive, later confessed to the crime and was sentenced to a 99-year prison term. But Ray later tried to withdraw his confession and said he was set up by a man named Raoul. He maintained until his death in 1998 that he did not kill King. The recanted confession and the FBI's shadowy operations under J. Edgar Hoover have sparked widespread conspiracy theories over who really killed the civil rights icon. King's children have said they don't believe Ray was the shooter and that they support the findings of a 1999 wrongful death lawsuit that found that King was the victim of a broad conspiracy that involved government agents. Department of Justice officials maintain that the findings of the civil lawsuit are not credible. Read the MLK files Looking to read the MLK files yourself? You can find them on the National Archives' website here. Most of the files are scans of documents, and some are blurred or have become faint or difficult to read in the decades since King's assassination. There are also photographs and sound recordings.
The Hill
15 hours ago
- The Hill
MLK assassination files released: What to know
The Trump administration on Monday released a trove of previously classified documents related to the 1968 assassination of civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK) in Memphis, Tenn. James Earl Ray, who died in prison in 1998, admitted to the murder after he was captured in London, but conspiracy theories have swirled about the motivation behind the attack and who may have been involved beyond Ray, including the federal government. Why now? Trump signed an executive order in January to release of the documents related to MLK's assassination. While campaigning for a second non-consecutive term last year, the president had promised to release FBI records related to the deaths of high-profile figures in the 1960s, including President John F. Kennedy Jr. (JFK) and former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (RFK). The documents related to the Kennedy brothers have also been released, prompting increased speculation about the high-profile assassinations. The president also signaled he would release the files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, but the administration said earlier this month that it had no additional information to provide and has sought a court release of grand jury testimony. What are the documents? The previously classified records related to MLK's assassination while he was standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis include details about the FBI's probe into the civil rights leader before his death five decades ago. King was in Tennessee to support sanitation workers who were on strike over low pay, and he had delivered his 'I've been to the mountaintop' speech there the night before. Then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover deemed King a radical and targeted him for investigation with the agency's Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO). Records have shown that the FBI had wiretaps on King's phone lines, surveilled his hotel rooms and used informants to build information against him while he led the 1960s Civil Rights effort against discrimination. What do they reveal? More than 230,000 pages of documents related to King's assassination were published in Monday's release. According to the National Archives, more files will be released as information is reviewed. The documents unveiled, so far, focus primarily on the FBI's investigation into King's death, such as agency memos and interviews with people who knew Ray, but they also provide insight into the FBI's investigation into King's anti-poverty and anti-war campaign before his death. Historians who have studied King told The New York Times that the documents provide little new information, though. How does the King family feel about this? His family has long questioned the conventional narrative that Ray, who pleaded guilty to the assassination and died in 1998 a Nashville, Tenn., prison at age 70, acted alone in the shooting death of King. A jury in a 1999 civil trial found that a man, who claimed to have known about a plot to kill King, and unnamed others — including government agencies — had participated in a conspiracy to carry out the killing. However, the Justice Department reopened the case in the 1990s and said it 'found nothing to disturb the 1969 judicial determination that James Earl Ray murdered Dr. King.' King's two living children, Martin Luther King III and Bernice A. King, released a joint statement on Monday saying that they disagreed with the Trump administration's release of the documents on their father without appropriate context. 'We recognize that the release of documents concerning the assassination of our father, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., has long been a subject of interest, captivating public curiosity for decades,' the duo wrote. 'We ask those who engage with the release of these files to do so with empathy, restraint, and respect for our family's continuing grief.' They urged people to view the files 'within their full historical context.' 'During our father's lifetime, he was relentlessly targeted by an invasive, predatory, and deeply disturbing disinformation and surveillance campaign orchestrated by J. Edgar Hoover through the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI),' the Kings continued. 'The intent of the government's COINTELPRO campaign was not only to monitor, but to discredit, dismantle, and destroy Dr. King's reputation and the broader American Civil Rights Movement.' 'These actions were not only invasions of privacy, but intentional assaults on the truth – undermining the dignity and freedoms of private citizens who fought for justice, designed to neutralize those who dared to challenge the status quo,' they added. The King family won a wrongful death lawsuit against Shelby County, Tenn., in 1999. 'The jury unanimously concluded that our father was the victim of a conspiracy … including government agencies as a part of a wider scheme,' the King children said in their statement. 'As we review these newly released files, we will assess whether they offer additional insights beyond the findings our family has already accepted.' The two also noted their support for 'transparency and historical accountability,' but warned against efforts to smear their father's legacy that may come from the release. 'Those who promote the fruit of the FBI's surveillance will unknowingly align themselves with an ongoing campaign to degrade our father and the Civil Rights Movement,' they wrote. 'Let us move forward together, inspired by our father's enduring vision of the Beloved Community – a world made possible when we choose to center love in all that we do.' They added, 'By embracing compassion, mutual respect, and justice, we can transform his dream into our shared reality.'
15 hours ago
MLK's daughter implores the White House to release Epstein files
The daughter of Martin Luther King Jr. said the White House should make public the files on financier-turned-sex offender Jeffrey Epstein after the Trump administration released thousands of files on her father's 1968 assassination over objections from her and other relatives of the civil rights leader. "Now, do the Epstein Files," Bernice King, CEO of The King Center in Atlanta, wrote in a social media post on X on Monday night. Bernice King's social media post, accompanied by a black-and-white photo of her late father, came after she and her brother, Martin Luther King III, issued a statement on the government's release on Monday of 230,000 files related to their father's assassination. "As the children of Dr. King and Mrs. Coretta Scott King, his tragic death has been an intensely personal grief -- a devastating loss for his wife, children, and the granddaughter he never met -- an absence our family has endured for over 57 years," the children of the civil rights' leader said in their statement. "We ask those who engage with the release of these files to do so with empathy, restraint, and respect for our family's continuing grief." On Monday, Tulsi Gabbard, the White House National Intelligence director, announced the release of the King assassination files in accordance with President Donald Trump's Jan. 23 executive order to declassify records concerning the assassinations of King, President John F. Kennedy and his brother, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. Gabbard said the files were being made public in coordination with the Department of Justice, the FBI, the CIA and the National Archives. Gabbard said the King files include records that have "never been digitized and sat collecting dust in facilities across the federal government for decades." "The American people have waited nearly sixty years to see the full scope of the federal government's investigation into Dr. King's assassination," Gabbard said in a statement. "Under President Trump's leadership, we are ensuring that no stone is left unturned in our mission to deliver complete transparency on this pivotal and tragic event in our nation's history. I extend my deepest appreciation to the King family for their support." In her statement, Gabbard included quotes from Alveda King, Martin Luther King's niece and a former Georgia state representative. "My uncle lived boldly in pursuit of truth and justice, and his enduring legacy of faith continues to inspire Americans to this day. While we continue to mourn his death, the declassification and release of these documents are a historic step towards the truth that the American people deserve," said Alveda King, a supporter of President Trump. The Rev. Al Sharpton, founder and president of the National Action Network civil rights organization, criticized the release of the King assassination records as a "desperate attempt to distract people from the firestorm engulfing Trump over the Epstein files." "The integrity of Dr. King's legacy can and will not be weaponized to serve Trump's cynical agenda," Sharpton said. "I urge the public to see this for what it is and not fall for the bait and switch." Trump has come under criticism recently from his own supporters for not releasing the files on Epstein, who died from suicide in 2019 in a federal detention center in New York City where he was being held while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges. Trump, who once had a friendly relationship with Epstein, said last week that he has urged Attorney General Pam Bondi to release "whatever she thinks is credible" about the Epstein files. The president also told reporters that he doesn't understand why some of his supporters are so interested in the "sordid, but boring" contents of the Epstein files. He added, "I think, really, only pretty bad people, including the fake news, want to keep something like that going."
