WAFC Local News – October 16, 2026, 8:06 AM
Transcript
I’m Charles Murphy reporting. The city attorney in LaBelle continued to work with Waste Connections to resolve contract issues and extend the contract. Derek Rooney said one possibility to lower the cost would be reduced service. We’re going to go to one pickup a week for now until we resolve this because we don’t want to increase the bleed. I’m happy to start the discussion about that. It may be a little bit easier. Some are talking about splitting up the contract, giving different services to different companies. An attempted murder in the Glades, the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office, arresting a Lake Worth man, Yod Nelson Jean, on charges that include possession of a firearm. The shooting took place in unincorporated Palm Beach County on October 11th. The victim was shot in the left arm and was transported to St. Mary’s for treatment. There were two victims in the case. Jean allegedly approached them, engaged in an argument, produced a handgun, and fired a round toward them, striking the victim. They both served as eyewitnesses and were able to identify Jean. A 29-year-old LaBelle man, Adrian Roldan, is facing charges that include attempted burglary to a vehicle. Henry deputies responded to the report of a suspicious person pulling on vehicle door handles. Roldan matched the description of the male observed pulling on the door handles. The homeowner had video that showed the suspect attempting to open the doors of vehicles. The suspect denied the allegation. Deputies continued to work the case and found some other victims. A 56-year-old Belle Glade woman, Helen Swanson, is charged with dealing in stolen property. She allegedly went to Okeechobee to purchase a gun. Two firearms were stolen from an RV park in Belle Glade, along with $30,000 of jewelry. They located a pawn slip where some of the jewelry was sold at a pawn shop in Lee County. Glades County deputies were involved in the case and served a search warrant in Lakeport. They were able to recover multiple stolen firearms and some jewelry. These rainy afternoons are making it rough on lawmen as they’ve seen a spike in the number of car crashes in Hendry, Glades, and Western Palm Beach County. The Highway Patrol’s Lieutenant Greg Bueno says traffic crashes spike even after the rain stops. But it’s after the rain that really our numbers tend to spike. It’s because motorists want to just automatically go back to driving how they normally do on dry roads. And you just can’t do that. Bueno is promoting safer driving habits. When it’s actually raining hard at the time, there are traffic crashes. We see an uptick, naturally. And it’s because you cannot drive like you normally drive if it’s raining. The mealy bug now in 27 Florida counties. Dr. Nicole Quinn of the University of Florida says there’s a variety of ways to fight this bug. The goal is that hopefully someday we have enough solutions, a combination of, for integrated pest management, right? We have the chemical controls, we have cultural controls, and then we have a better understanding of the natural enemies. And some combination of these things, we can achieve better control and in a cost-effective way for everyone. They may have come up with a way to help with the damage of sugarcane. Sugar grass is a favorite target of the mealy bug. I’m Charles Murphy, WAFC News.
Recorded from the WAFC daily newscast (Glades Media).