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Car was found in an Everglades canal. Hours later, Broward cops found dead body
Deputies responded to reports of a submerged vehicle near Krome Avenue and U.S. Highway 27 around 9 p.m. on Wednesday and found a Chevy Tahoe underwater, Broward Sheriff's Office told the Miami Herald. The agency's dive team, missing persons unit, marine patrol and drone unit were deployed to locate the SUV when, hours later, the dead body turned up.
Marshall Jones, owner of Mack's Fish Camp, an air boat tour business located on the same stretch of canal, was the first to phone authorities and guided rescue crews when they arrived.
'I saw fresh skid marks and disturbance on the side of the levy and bubbles in the canal,' Marshall Jones told the Miami Herald.
Jones described the body as a man in his 30s. He told the Miami Herald he thinks the body was the driver and that he had been ejected from the SUV before he was found.
BSO's Traffic Homicide Unit is now investigating how the sunken car and its driver ended up in the canal.
This story will be updated as more information becomes available.
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Miami Herald
an hour ago
- Miami Herald
U.S. citizen dies following Israeli settler arson attacks in the West Bank
A U.S. citizen died in the West Bank on Thursday morning, the U.S. State Department confirmed to the Miami Herald. According to his family, Khamis Abdul Latif Ayyad, 41, died of smoke-related injuries, after Israeli settlers set fire to cars in his village in the middle of the night. A U.S. State Department official confirmed Ayyad's death and citizenship in a statement to the Herald, but did not provide information about his cause of death. 'We can confirm the death of a U.S. citizen in the town of Silwad in the West Bank. We offer condolences to the family on their loss and are providing consular assistance to them. We condemn criminal violence by any party in the West Bank,' a State Department spokesperson said. Ayyad is the second known U.S. citizen to die this month in the West Bank, as residents tell reporters that the assaults from Israeli settlers have become nearly a daily occurrence. Just one town over from Silwad, 20-year-old Florida-born Sayfollah 'Saif' Musallet was beaten to death on Jul. 11 by Israeli settlers, who also shot and killed a second man. Musallet's death sparked outrage among Americans and Muslim groups in Florida who called for an investigation from the DeSantis administration and the Department of Justice. Mike Huckabee, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, wrote on X on July 15 that he asked Israel to 'aggressively investigate' Musallet's death. 'There must be accountability for this criminal and terrorist act,' he wrote. 'Saif was just 20 yrs old.' The Herald reached out to Huckabee but has yet to receive a response about Ayyad's death. A national Muslim advocacy group, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, called for an investigation on Friday. Ayyad grew up in Silwad, a small village in the West Bank, but moved to the United States in 2008 with his wife, also a U.S. citizen, and settled in Chicago. Together they raised four sons and one daughter, ages 6 to 15. At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, he moved back to the West Bank, and continued working remotely for an IT company, according to his brother, Ayman Ayyad. The Herald reached out to Palestinian and Israeli officials, including the Israeli Defense Forces, but has yet to receive a response. Around 2:30 a.m. Thursday morning Khamis Ayyad called his brother, Ayman Ayyad, who didn't pick up. Ayman Ayyad received a call around 4 a.m. from another brother who informed him that Khamis Ayyad had been transferred to a nearby hospital in Ramallah. He arrived to find that his brother had died. Khamis Ayyad had rushed to his brother's aid after settlers set fire to a car under the family house, Ayman Ayyad said. He died from smoke inhalation, according to his family and a Palestinian news agency. The family said the fire was started by Israeli settlers who came into Silwad, a village in the central West Bank near several Israeli settlements, in the middle of the night and set cars and homes ablaze. A funeral took place on Friday, and relatives are waiting for an autopsy to determine his official cause of death. The family has strong ties in the United States. Khamis Ayyad is one of nine children – seven of whom are U.S. citizens, according to his brother Ayman Ayyad, who live in Chicago and Philadelphia. They have cousins in Tampa, Fla. Ayman Ayyad described his brother as a family man. Whenever he wasn't working, he was with his wife and children. He was well-liked in his community, and focused on his family and building his career. 'He was loved by everyone,' he said. 'He caused no problems at all.' Ayman Ayyad had little to say to U.S. officials. He said that the 'whole world' already knows about the attacks in the West Bank and Jerusalem. 'What, is it something people can't see? The whole world already sees it,' he said. This story was produced with financial support from Trish and Dan Bell and from donors comprising the South Florida Jewish and Muslim Communities, including Khalid and Diana Mirza, in partnership with Journalism Funding Partners. The Miami Herald maintains full editorial control of this work.
Miami Herald
2 hours ago
- Miami Herald
When did Trump and Epstein friendship end? President's answers raise questions
President Donald Trump's varying explanations about his fallout with Jeffrey Epstein have raised more questions than answers as he struggles to move on from his days of partying in Palm Beach with the late financier. A variety of reasons have been given as to why the two men stopped being friends: Epstein 'stole' his female employees, a real estate deal went bad, and Epstein was inappropriate with a daughter of a member of Mar-a-Lago. The conflicting accounts have led to a closer examination of his and Epstein's relationship, leading to questions about the timeline of their friendship, what the president knew about Epstein's dealings with young girls and if there is more to the story. Their friendship is thought to have started in South Florida in 1990, when Epstein bought a property two miles north of Mar-a-Lago, Trump's private Palm Beach Club. Read the Miami Herald's Perversion of Justice The date of their breakup remains a question mark. For years, Trump put the date as 2004, saying he and Epstein fell out over a South Florida property that both men coveted. Trump outbid Epstein for the Palm Beach mansion known as the House of Friendship, paying $41.35 million. The competitive business process brought an end to their dealings, according to Trump. But last week he shocked the family of one of Epstein's victims when he gave a new reason he ended the relationship - because Epstein 'stole' female employees working at Mar-a-Lago's spa, including the late Virginia Giuffre. 'People were taken out of the spa, hired by him,' he told reporters. Giuffre, who died by suicide this past April at age 41, told the story differently. According to court papers, she said she was approached by Ghislaine Maxwell - not Epstein - when she was working in the women's locker room of Trump's resort. And the year that happened: 2000. However, some reports put the friendship ending as late as 2007 when Trump barred Epstein from Mar-a-Lago after the financier behaved inappropriately toward a club member's teenage daughter. A Mar-a-Lago member told the Miami Herald that, in October 2007, Trump had 'kicked Epstein out after Epstein harassed the daughter of a member.' McClatchy reached out to the White House for comment and did not immediately receive a response. It was Trump's specific comments about Giuffre, the most well-known of the Epstein accusers, that brought about the new scrutiny, including when he said he warned Epstein not to poach the young women from his club. 'People would come and complain, 'this guy is taking people from the spa.' I didn't know that,' Trump told reporters late last week. 'And then when I heard about it, I told him, I said, 'Listen, we don't want you taking our people, whether it was spa or not spa.' I don't want him taking people. And he was fine. And then not too long after that, he did it again and I said, 'Out of here,'' he added. Giuffre's family pushed back at Trump's statement that Epstein 'stole' Virginia and questioned what else he knows. 'She wasn't stolen, she was preyed upon at his property, at President Trump's property,' Sky Roberts, Giuffre's brother, told CNN on Thursday evening. Read More: Ghislaine Maxwell moved from Florida to minimum security prison in Texas He added that the president's comments raise questions about 'how much he knew during that time.' The president denied, however, that he knew Epstein was abusing young women. 'No, I don't know really why, but I said, if he's taken anybody from Mar-a-Lago, he's hiring or whatever he's doing, I didn't like it. And we threw him out,' he told reporters on Thursday. Giuffre said she met Maxwell in 2000, when she was 16 and working at Trump's Palm Beach club. Maxwell saw her reading a book on massage therapy and offered her a masseuse job with Epstein. Two years later, in 2002, Giuffre was able to escape Epstein's sex trafficking ring when he sent her to Thailand. She met a man there she married 10 days later and moved to his home in Australia to start a family. The same year Giuffre got away, Trump raved about Epstein to New York magazine, which wrote a profile of the financier. Trump, in what are now infamous quotes, called Epstein a 'terrific guy' who likes women 'on the younger side.' 'I've known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy,' he said at the time. 'He's a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it -- Jeffrey enjoys his social life.' Additionally, in 2003, Trump took part in a gift album for Epstein's 50th birthday, according to the Wall Street Journal. Trump denies participating. Trump gave another number in 2019, when Epstein was arrested on federal charges tied to sex trafficking. The president, who was in his first term at the time, said he hadn't spoken with Epstein in 15 years. 'I knew him like everybody in Palm Beach knew him. I mean, people in Palm Beach knew him. He was a fixture in Palm Beach,' Trump said in the Oval Office. 'I had a falling out with him a long time ago. I don't think I've spoken to him for 15 years. I wasn't a fan. I was not, yeah, a long time ago, I'd say maybe 15 years. I was not a fan of his, that I can tell you. I was not a fan of his.'
Miami Herald
21 hours ago
- Miami Herald
‘Scared to die': Venezuelan who was held in megaprison files complaint against U.S.
He once dreamed of being recognized for his work — but instead, the U.S. sent him to a mega-prison in El Salvador. Branded a gang member and a terrorist, he spent four months behind bars. Now, after his release and return to Venezuela, he's determined to clear his name. Neiyerver Adrian Leon Rengel was one of more than 250 Venezuelans detained in the United States who was transferred in March to the Salvadoran maximum-security prison known as CECOT, the Spanish initials for Terrorism Confinement Center. 'I was very scared,' Leon Rengel, 27, told the Miami Herald, describing how guards would frequently insult them, calling them trash, scumbags and worse, and often told them they would never leave the prison. 'Even more so when a Salvadoran officer told me I was going to die there or spend 90 years in prison. While I was in CECOT, I never saw a lawyer or a judge. They wouldn't even let me make a phone call.' Read more: 'I have nightmares': Venezuelans imprisoned in El Salvador relive terror after return home The League of United Latin American Citizens, LULAC, a Washington-based civil-rights organization, has filed an administrative complaint with the Department of Homeland Security on his behalf, alleging Leon Rengel was deported without reason or due process. The complaint also details the abuses Leon Rengel said he endured at CECOT. 'He was beaten in his chest and stomach by guards, who used fists and batons to inflict pain,' the complaint says. 'On one occasion, he was taken to an area of the prison without cameras, where guards routinely brought detainees to assault them without leaving a video record. There, [Leon] Rengel was viciously beaten.' Leon Rengel told the Herald the Venezuelan detainees were kept in a separate module from Salvadoran detainees that housed 32 cells. He said he was placed in one of the cells with 19 other men, though some detainees were held in cells with fewer people, he said. He said he and his countrymen were 'beaten badly' if they complained about prison conditions. He recounted sleeping on bare metal bunks, stacked four levels high, without bedding or pillows. The two toilets in his cell were entirely open, offering no privacy, he added. He said the only time they were given mattresses and sheets was when authorities came to visit. 'Once the photos were taken and the authorities left, the guards would come and take away the mattresses and blankets,' he recalled. During the 125 days the Venezuelans were held at CECOT, they were not allowed outside once, he said: 'We never saw sunlight.' At one point, during a prison riot, he said, inmates were placed in an area called La Isla, the island, 'to beat us with batons. He described the island as a dark, small punishment room with a circular vent and two cross-shaped bars. The space was meant for two people, Leon Rengel said, but guards crammed in more detainees. 'They brought in several prisoners to beat us. We went more than 24 hours without water or light.' After the beatings, he said, they were taken to get medical care, but a doctor falsified the records, claiming their injuries were from playing soccer, something he says never happened. 'We hardly ever left the cells.' The complaint filed on Leon Rengel's behalf by LULAC in partnership with the Democracy Defenders Fund seeks $1.3 million in damages for violations of his civil rights. 'They gave him a document in English stating he could either be deported to Venezuela or appear before a judge,' said Juan Proaño, CEO of LULAC. 'Leon Rengel chose to see a judge — but he was never given that opportunity. Homeland Security failed to follow due process.' The complaint is the first step before litigation. Homeland Security has six months to respond. If they fail to do so, a lawsuit will be filed in Washington, D.C., Proaño said. Over the past four months, as both Venezuelan and Salvadoran detainees have been held at CECOT, El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele has denied any allegations of torture inside the mega-prison. Responding to reports of abuse, he said, 'Apparently, anything a criminal claims is accepted as truth by the mainstream media and the crumbling Western judiciary.' When Leon Rengel emigrated to the U.S. in 2023, his goal was simple: to become a well-known barber and showcase his art. But in the heightened immigration crackdown during the Trump administration, he was labeled a member of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, largely because of his tattoos. He was arrested on March 13, his birthday, in the parking garage of his apartment in Irving, Texas, where he was living with his girlfriend. At the time, he was on a video call with his 6-year-old daughter, Isabella, who lives in Caracas, he said. Four Drug Enforcement Administration patrol cars surrounded him and arrested him, he said, although the agency has never clarified its role. 'They asked me to lift up my shirt, and when they saw my tattoos they accused me of being member of Tren de Aragua. But they never showed any evidence of a connection to the gang,' he said. 'They just laughed while wishing me happy birthday.' U.S. immigration agents have been targeting Venezuelan men based on tattoo images like animals, basketballs or reggaeton lyrics, even in the absence of any criminal record. Experts have said Tren de Aragua doesn't typically use tattoos as gang markers, and relying on them as indicators of gang ties risks serious miscarriages of justice. READ MORE: 'Crime of tattooing': Why experts say body ink is no way to ID Venezuelan gang members 'When I entered the U.S., nobody questioned me about my tattoos or anything related to a gang. It wasn't until after 2024 that I first heard officers mentioning tattoos and the gang,' Leon Rengel said. Records show that Leon Rengel entered the U.S. on June 12, 2023, through the Paso del Norte port of entry on the Mexico-Texas border after a prescheduled appointment on CBP One, a digital portal created by the Biden administration designed to manage the flow of migrants at the southern border. When he was arrested in March, Leon Rengel had been living in the U.S. for 21 months, with a pending Temporary Protected Status application, and was scheduled to appear before an immigration judge on April 4, 2028. He had one arrest in the U.S., in November 2024, for possession of drug paraphernalia — a non-jailable misdemeanor under Texas law. He was a passenger in a vehicle that was pulled over. According to Irving city records, he later pleaded guilty to possession of marijuana and was fined $492. He received no jail time or probation. In a statement issued in April — at a time Leon Rengel's family had no knowledge of his whereabouts — and repeated again in July, Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said he had 'entered our country illegally in 2023 from Venezuela and is an associate of Tren de Aragua.' But DHS did not provide any documentation to support the claim or explain why Leon Rengel was sent to El Salvador— especially given that the U.S. and Venezuela have been cooperating in the deportation of Venezuelan nationals directly back to their home country. For weeks after his detention in Texas his family had no idea where he was. He hadn't been returned to Venezuela, where his mother, Sandra Rengel, and three of his four siblings live, nor was his name in the Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainee locator system or even on CECOT records obtained by media outlets. His relatives only learned of his whereabouts on April 23 through media reports, 39 days after he was deported to El Salvador. READ MORE: Weeks after disappearance, DHS confirms Venezuelan man was deported to El Salvador 'The most difficult part was for my mother and daughter, who didn't know where I was — whether I was alive or dead,' Leon Rengel said. 'My daughter suffered a lot. She prayed every day to see me again.' After his detenton in Irving he was briefly held at the Bluebonnet Detention Facility in Anson, Texas and later transferred to the East Hidalgo Detention Center, a privately run facility used by ICE in La Villa, Texas. Two days later he was deported to El Salvador. Leon Rengel said he and dozens of other Venezuelan detainees were told they were being deported to Venezuela. ICE agents 'never told us we were going to El Salvador,' he said. 'They said we were being sent to Venezuela and even made us lower the airplane window shades. The surprise came when we landed in San Salvador.' On July 18, the United States and Venezuela carried out a wide-ranging prisoner swap. As part of the agreement, 252 Venezuelans who had been deported from the U.S. and held in El Salvador's maximum-security prison were exchanged for dozens of political prisoners and 10 Americans imprisoned in Venezuela — including a Venezuelan-American who had been convicted of committing a triple murder in Spain. Leon Rengel said his only goal in filing the complaint is to clear his name. 'It's unfair they detained us without any evidence of wrongdoing. I have no criminal record in Venezuela or Colombia. All I want is for them to be held accountable for the harm the government did to me.' More than 75 other Venezuelan men that were held in CECOT are preparing similar claims, some of which involve allegations of head trauma, sexual violence and other forms of abuse, according to Proaño, the LULAC executive. 'This claim is too important to ignore,' Proaño said. 'If the Department of Homeland Security can deport Venezuelans without due process, they can do it to anyone — migrants of other nationalities, even U.S. citizens who are mistakenly identified. What's to stop them from sending people to third countries they're not even from?' He added: 'We can't let that become the norm. They need to be held accountable — and that means financial consequences.' Proaño said if the U.S. government is forded to pay '$1 million to each of the 250 people wrongfully deported to El Salvador, that's $250 million. That's a small amount compared to the billions already being spent to deport Latinos. It's the only way they'll learn.' Leon Rengel was born in 1998 — the same year Hugo Chávez rose to power, marking the beginning of Venezuela's unraveling. Growing up in a poor neighborhood of Caracas, his generation faced blackouts, food shortages and the crumbling of institutions. Before moving to the U.S., he spent six years in Colombia with his partner and daughter, maintaining a clean record, according to Colombian authorities. Inspired by friends who had successfully built new lives in America, he decided to emigrate. Now, he regrets that choice. 'If everything changes in the U.S., I'd go back just to visit — to see places I've always dreamed of,' he said. 'But I wouldn't try to build a life there again. This government is destroying the future of many Hispanics, especially Venezuelans.'
