WAFC Local News – November 05, 2026, 8:06 AM
Transcript
I’m Charles Murphy reporting. A Henry County deputy himself arrested on extortion charges trying to extort the sheriff himself. 27-year-old Braxton Haight left a voicemail for the sheriff Tuesday asking him to contact him about a pretty urgent matter. Haight told Witten he was aware that the sheriff was attempting to terminate his employment and further stated he had documentation he would release to the public if the sheriff did not meet his demands. He wanted him to give him his canine and leave his personnel file without disciplinary action. When they met later in the day at the Henry County Port LaBelle annex, the office was free-wired and video recorded. The deputy allegedly told Witten he had a recording of what he referred to as having a sheriff’s deputy making a derogatory comment that would not make the agency look good. Haight was taken into custody and charged with the one felony count. Henry County, you have a new Congresswoman, Pia Dandia, won the race for Congress over Casey Asghar. Dandia claims she is an American success story. My mom became Miss Dandia or Miss Bubbly to teach generations of students. And tonight, one generation later, their daughter is about to become Congresswoman Dandia. District 22 also covers parts of Palm Beach and Broward County. The city of LaBelle hasn’t heard yet from the federal or state department in environmental protections on grants they’ve been awarded for water and sewer improvements. Finance director Lily Davenport says it may delay some of the projects. To continue projects at the pace that they’re going right now, I don’t know that the city could continue to fund that. The city took out a $20 million line of credit to pay the bills until they are reimbursed. This ultimately means government red tape is costing one government to receive payment from another government. Pahokee commissioners decided against taking a civility pledge. Their meetings sometimes had gone off the rails with emotions and slanderous comments and uproar over the years with the public. Admittedly, they seem to have calmed down in the past since interim manager Tammy Bussey left. Vice mayor Isabel McDonald says the civility pledge would keep them on good behavior. I really don’t see the harm that it would be to have this pledge as a reminder. Mayor Keith Babb says he didn’t feel it was needed at the current time. What happened in the past that brought that up was because we was being, I think, as a commission as a whole, sometimes disrespectful to other commissioners. I don’t think it, maybe it’s happening to some people, may feel that way, but I don’t see it happening at this particular time. City of Clewiston planned a workshop November 9th to discuss a city procurement policy. Mayor Jimmy Pittman says he doesn’t want to give up on plans to improve the lakefront with more park uses rather than only marina uses. Whatever happened to our lakefront project, we talked about it a few months ago after the city engineer, city planner made a visit. What’s the guy from South Florida Water Management’s name? Bill Flood. Bill Flood, he shut it down, that’s what happened. Yeah, we never got a report on what happened. We were pursuing that project. So nothing was shut down. He did put us in our place, though. Also speaking in that cut were Jason Williams and the building official, Chris Cooper. Jeffrey W.AFC News.
Recorded from the WAFC daily newscast (Glades Media).