Crime

Alexander Lightner of Venice was sentenced in federal court today to 51 months in prison for possession of an unregistered firearm. His case was investigated by the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force.Court documents said Lightner is a member of the Terrorgram Collective — an online organization promoting white supremacy. The group espouses that violence and terrorism are necessary to ignite a race war and accelerate the collapse of the government.

The arrest of three men in connection with separate and unrelated child sexual abuse material cases was described today by Florida Attorney General James Uthemeyer at a media briefing in Fort Myers.Those arrested included former LaBelle resident 46-year-old Jason Harrison of Jacksonville, 41-year-old Kevin Sheffield of Naples and 34-year-old Travis Montgomery of Bradenton.

A Charlotte County Public Schools teacher/coach is on administrative leave for an issue a school official said is “serious.” The official confirmed the district is cooperating with an investigation by Punta Gorda police.

Amid the abandoned chemistry notes and other debris left behind after a deadly shooting at Florida State University are lingering questions about how the stepson of a beloved sheriff’s deputy tasked with school safety at a middle school became the accused gunman.Political science student Phoenix Ikner was a long-standing member of a sheriff’s office youth advisory council and was steeped in the family-like culture of the agency. When officers rushed to the university’s student union on reports of gunfire, authorities say it was the 20-year-old who used his stepmother’s former service weapon to open fire, killing two men and wounding six others.

FSU reported an active shooter on its campus Wednesday around noon.

A Lehigh Acres woman is going to spend 10 years in federal prison for a fraud scheme that netted her nearly $4.2 million.As part of her sentence, U.S. District Judge Thomas P. Barber ordered 49-year-old Madelyn Hernandez to forfeit $4,199,498.42, the proceeds of the wire fraud.

Timothy Craig Jolloff, 48, and Lisa Ann Jolloff, 58, of Fort Myers have been sentenced to eight years and one month, and three years, respectively, in federal prison for wire fraud, bank fraud and illegal monetary transactions connected to a COVID relief fraud case.U.S. District Judge Thomas J. Barber handed down the sentences Friday.

Seth Miller visited his client at North Florida’s Jackson Correctional Institution in February of 2019 with some good news. The client, Thomas Gilbert, was serving a life sentence for a 1973 murder in North Miami Beach he always said he didn’t commit.That afternoon, Miller, the executive director of the Innocence Project of Florida, informed Gilbert they had discovered powerful new evidence of his innocence that included police files from 1977 containing an entire reinvestigation of his case with multiple witness statements saying Gilbert was not present, the results of a polygraph Gilbert took “exculpating” him, and a confession from a man who said he was the one who actually committed the murder.