By Compiled from Times wires
Published August 12, 2003
TALLAHASSEE - A Miami man from Haiti claimed half of a $80.9-million Lotto jackpot Monday, saying he bought the winning ticket the first time he ever played the Florida Lottery.
Jacquelin Ferdinand, 55, took a lump sum of $21,601,782.48. He could have chosen 30 annual payments of about $1,349,000.
"This was the first time I ever played Lotto, and the numbers I chose were at random," he said at Florida Lottery headquarters.
Ferdinand said he didn't check his tickets until two weeks after the July 26 drawing, when he went to the suburban Miami gas station where he bought them to jot down the winning numbers: 12, 13, 21, 31, 37 and 47.
"I then drove down I-95 checking my numbers when I realized I had all six numbers," he said. "I had to pull over."
Ferdinand said he plans to keep working, but wouldn't disclose his occupation.
A Hollywood couple previously claimed the other half of the jackpot with a Lotto ticket they bought in Fort Myers.
Five freed, rescued whales still hanging around Keys
BIG PINE KEY - In their first full day back in the Atlantic Ocean, five pilot whales remained in the general area of their release about 14 miles off the lower Florida Keys, marine mammal researchers said Monday.
Experts on two vessels are tracking the whales, which were fitted with radio and satellite transponders before their return to sea Sunday. The vessels are expected to follow the whales for two weeks, but satellite tracking should provide position and scientific data for National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries' researchers through March.
"They've been diving and staying down a lot," said Jeff Foster, a NOAA Fisheries-contracted researcher. "We think they're pretty much staying together."
The vessels are equipped to capture a whale if it has problems and return it to shore.
The whales beached nearly four months ago and recovered under the 24-hour watch of volunteers coordinated by two Keys stranding organizations. They were set free Sunday in the first simultaneous release of five rehabilitated whales in the United States.
Former Haitian soldier held on torture accusation
FORT PIERCE - A former Haitian army soldier accused of torture was arrested here by immigration agents.
Olichard Sauveur is being held at the Krome detention center in Miami-Dade County after his arrest Friday, said Ana Santiago, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Santiago said Sauveur is accused of "physically abusing people who were resisting arrest" during the early 1990s. She did not know if the alleged abuses occurred under Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who took power in 1991, or Gen. Raul Cedras, who ousted Aristide in a coup that same year and whose regime was accused of widespread killings and rights violations before Aristide was returned to power with the help of U.S. troops in 1994.
U.S. officials were processing Sauveur for deportation to Haiti, she said.
Lost go-cart contraption really has police going
PENSACOLA - Police diverted traffic from Bayfront Parkway for three hours and evacuated a convenience store and several rooms at a neighboring hotel after three galvanized pipes fastened together with yellow tape were found on the store's lawn Sunday.
A team from the state Fire Marshal's Office eventually determined that the foot-long device was not a bomb, and police promised to file criminal charges if they found the person responsible for the hoax.
On Monday they got a call from Ryan Maxwell, 26, who read about the bomb scare in the Pensacola News Journal.
He told officers the pipes, filled with weights from a diving belt, were his. The device was a weight he had made to make his competition go-cart heavier during races.
Maxwell said he stopped at Groovin' Noovin's Food Store while transporting his go-cart and didn't realize he had lost the pipes until he got to his destination.
