Latest news with #Dozier
Yahoo
14-05-2025
- Yahoo
Two men charged with attempted murder for shooting outside a local adult night club
PANAMA CITY, Fla. (WMBB) – The Panama City Police Department and Springfield Police Department responded to the area of Bambi's Dollhouse regarding gunshots being heard on Saturday. Officers responded at about 2:45 a.m. However, they confirmed no injured parties were located. Officers said they found several vehicles had been struck by gunfire. Through the course of the investigation, detectives identified and interviewed witnesses, located surveillance footage, and collected evidence to determine the facts of the case. Investigators said they learned 25-year-old Chrishaun Dozier and 26-year-old Zacchaeus Lyles became involved in a dispute inside Bambi's Dollhouse before being escorted out by staff. Once outside, officials said the dispute continued to escalate with firearms being displayed and verbal threats made. Three arrested after armed burglary and kidnapping in Okaloosa County According to a news release, Dozier entered a blue Ford F-150 and, before leaving the area, pointed a firearm at Lyles. As the truck drove off with Dozier inside and no longer posing an immediate threat to him, Lyles fired approximately seven rounds from a 9mm handgun. The F-150 then changed directions, circling the block, and came back towards Lyles, with Dozier firing approximately 10 rounds at Lyles from a .40 caliber handgun, officials wrote. Detectives obtained arrest warrants for both subjects and searched diligently for the two suspects. On Tuesday, Dozier turned himself in to the Panama City Police Police Department. He was charged with attempted murder, aggravated assault with a firearm, possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, and firing a weapon from a vehicle. On Wednesday, detectives and Task Force members located Lyles at a residence in the 2400 block of E. 3rd St., where he was taken into custody without incident. Lyles has been charged with attempted murder, firing into a vehicle, and felon in possession of a firearm. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
NBC News
12-04-2025
- Business
- NBC News
Millennials have lived through economic uncertainty before. They're not nostalgic for more.
Millennials are worried they are about to experience a 'once-in-a-lifetime' recession. Again. Dire economic downturns are supposed to be rare, but millennials — defined by the Pew Research Center as those born between 1981 and 1996 — have already had several recessions during formative stages of their lives, from the dot-com bubble burst when most were children, to the Great Recession as they entered the workforce after college, to the Covid-19 pandemic when they were trying to settle into their careers. Once dubbed the ' unluckiest generation,' millennials have postponed major milestones during past recessions. A significant slice of them graduated college between 2007 and 2009 and struggled to find jobs, which led them to delay buying homes, getting married, and making major purchases, such as cars. Then, after the pandemic led to another sharp recession, some millennials, contending with student loans and rising costs of living, decided to rethink having kids. Now, as the Trump administration's tariffs program roils global markets, raising fears of another recession, the millennial cohort of approximately 29- to 44-year-olds is expressing their frustration and fatigue over the financial instability that has haunted so much of their lives. Some have posted videos on TikTok joking about how they have little advice for Gen Zers who may have to navigate their first possible recession. Others have shared how they are preparing for economic turmoil. Most are just going on social media to trade memes and jokes. 'It's out of our control, and so why not handle it with a sense of humor and joke about it?' said Jeremy Dozier, 38, a real estate agent in Los Angeles County, California, who has posted funny TikTok videos as a way to express his disdain for the current economic situation. Dozier knows how painful recessions can be: He graduated college in 2008 and was forced to take temp jobs out of college because he couldn't find full-time work during the Great Recession. By the time the pandemic hit, he had been in a steady job for a decade, but then was laid off. 'Every time we start to get ahead or it starts to feel like, 'OK, things are going to work out,' the other shoe drops,' he said. TikTok has been an outlet for him. In a video that Dozier posted in February, he pretends to sob as the song 'I Dreamed a Dream' from 'Les Misérables.' plays. The caption to the video reads: 'Millennials preparing to live through their 4th recession before hitting 40.' The video racked up 23,000 likes and hundreds of comments. For young people, sarcasm and memes have become increasingly popular coping mechanisms, said Pamela Aronson, a sociology professor in the Department of Behavioral Sciences at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. 'These social media arenas represent a shared cultural understanding, and these then get spread across groups who are connected to each other digitally,' she said. ''It both reflects and transforms how we think about things.' Not all members of this generation have fared poorly during past economic uncertainty. A wave of millennials were able to purchase houses during the pandemic. And concern about another recession is not limited to only their age group, said Jean Twenge, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University and author of the 2023 book 'Generations,' which posits that technology, not major events in history, is the primary cause of generational differences. 'Millennials went through these horrible economic times at the beginning of their adult lives, then built everything back up, did really well, and now are rightfully concerned that if there's another recession, that they could lose it all again,' Twenge said. But, she added: 'I do think this is something that is coming up for people of all ages.' There was some relief Wednesday afternoon, as stocks soared after President Donald Trump announced that he would pause for 90 days higher tariff rates on dozens of trading partners. John Sabelhaus, a visiting fellow in economic studies at the Washington-based think tank the Brookings Institution, pointed out that 'the overall strategy of the current Congress could be extremely disruptive' still and noted that a financial downturn at this time would be especially damaging to millennials. 'Millennials are exactly at that age where they are building businesses, and they're trying to make these businesses work,' he said. 'It's always risky, and when you throw in a lot of macroeconomic risk, it just makes it that much worse.' Christie Cronan, a millennial content creator in Central Florida who has been posting about recession fears, said she feels like her videos have brought comfort to others in her generation. 'Everyone feels validated, that that this is what people are expecting, that we are in an economic downturn of some sort — whether they want to call it a recession or not,' she said. Dozier, the millennial in California, said posting lighthearted TikToks has prompted other people to open up about their economic anxiety. He said people have shared what they are doing to prepare for financial stress, with some saying they are growing their own food and others commenting that they bought an extra freezer so they can try to stockpile frozen items now before tariffs hit. 'While people in the comments are talking about the struggles they're going through, it's all kind of handled with a sense of humor and a sense of community,' he said. 'We're going to weather the storm together.'
Yahoo
01-04-2025
- Yahoo
A Reporter, a Death Row Inmate, and a Broken System
For nearly 10 years I've reported on the broken system of capital punishment in America. But there was one death row inmate in Nevada whose memory I wasn't able to shake — so much so that I decided to investigate his story from birth until death. That saga unfolds in my book, out today: The Volunteer: The Failure of the Death Penalty in America and One Inmate's Quest to Die with Dignity. For more than a year, I spoke with Scott Dozier multiple times per week, trying to understand him and his unusual decision to volunteer for execution. That's right: Instead of exhausting his appeals, he wrote the judge a letter requesting he be put to death. For him, that was better than spending another few decades in a 9-foot-by-5-foot cell. Through my reporting, I would come to see Dozier's story as a powerful representation of our nation's broken capital punishment system, one in which the vast majority of sentences were never fulfilled, where prisoners and their victims' families were left in an unbearable limbo, where the very practice of lethal injection was so fraught that prison officials resorted to trading execution drugs amongst themselves in parking lots and importing them illegally from overseas. While reporting for this book, I'd often have to remind myself that these weren't drug-trafficking cartels from shows like Breaking Bad, but were in fact American government officials enacting the will of its people. Here's how my story begins. My strange journey into the world of death row began on October 9, 2017, when an executive producer at my documentary company emailed me a newswire from the Associated Press: NV/FENT EXECUTION: State to use fentanyl to execute 46-year-old, Scott Dozier, in its first execution in more than a decade. I hardly had time to take it in before I read the last line of the producer's email, oh shit, echoing the very thought running through my mind. The last several years had been the most exhilarating of my career. After working overtime and overnights at ABC News and Al Jazeera, I had landed a job as a correspondent with VICE News and was now getting to take the reins, covering stories I thought needed to be told. In Iraq, we witnessed how soldiers were fending off ISIS fighters on the front lines. At Guantánamo Bay, prison officers showed us how they were force-feeding detainees during hunger strikes. In Russia, hackers infiltrated American bank accounts and revealed their playbooks for lucrative scams. In Somalia, we were chased out of remote towns controlled by an al-Qaeda affiliate while showing how diaspora were risking their lives to rebuild the country. A few months before I received the email about Dozier's execution, as I was developing stories for season six of the HBO documentary show VICE, I had sent a message to my co-producer Nicole Bozorgmir with the subject line Death penalty. After producing more than 100 stories for the show, covering the most pressing issues around the world, from mass shootings to the war on terror, it was surprising we hadn't covered the topic. A story about the death penalty would also give us the opportunity to point out the absurdity of the modern condition, a theme often present in our best segments. We started to hone our story, about how states were failing to acquire the lethal injection drugs they needed to carry out their death sentences. My first step had been to reach out to a longtime source, Vanessa Potkin, a veteran attorney with the Innocence Project. She told me about a man named Eddie Lee Howard Jr., on Mississippi's death row, where they hadn't executed anybody in years because they couldn't get the necessary drugs. Howard seemed like an incredibly compelling character, in part because Potkin said their team had DNA evidence they thought would exonerate him. I already knew, as I pored over Howard's case, that 160 wrongfully convicted people had been exonerated from death row in America since 1973. The only problem was, Potkin didn't think we'd get an interview with Howard. State governments often refuse journalists in-person access to film with death row inmates before their executions have been scheduled. We went down a list of potential interviewees, but it seemed none of the men (and they were virtually all men) had execution dates; after months of research, our leads were wearing thin. There was no way we were going to get an on-camera sit-down interview with one of these guys. Without that interview, the story wouldn't get a green light. During this search I pulled up the email from my executive producer. I focused on that name. Scott Dozier. I thought, What the hell, and typed it into Google, turning up mostly local media reporting on Dozier's story, though there was one CNN article. 'Execution in Nevada to Use Powerful Opioid Fentanyl,' its headline ran. When CNN picked up a local story, it was often a sign that it was poised to make the national news cycle soon. I clicked on a related story by the Reno Gazette-Journal, and an early detail within it gave me pause: 'Dozier was sentenced to death after he was convicted of first-degree murder for killing and dismembering Jeremiah Miller.' Not exactly the character I had in mind, I thought. What kind of viewer is going to sympathize with this guy? Still, I kept reading, discovering that while he might be, as I could only imagine, a sick and violent character, Dozier had one thing the other death row inmates didn't: an execution date. It was in three weeks, on November 14. Soon, but also well within our deadline. Another detail caught my eye, one that I could just as easily have missed. The article said that a judge had 'recently granted his request to be put to death.' He was, in other words, volunteering for execution. It occurred to me that since he was effectively asking the state to kill him, the prison might feel less threatened by inquiries from the media. After all, the government and the prisoner weren't in disagreement; they both wanted his execution to happen. It turned out I wasn't even the first VICE reporter to have covered Dozier. In 2012, Dozier wrote a letter to a music editor there named Kelly McClure. Dozier was a VICE fan. 'You are hilarious and awesome and I love you,' he had written her, 'not, however, like you'd reasonably (and correctly the vast majority of the time) presume someone on death row means when they say they 'love' you. You've made it plain you're a lesbian — which is terrific, but again, not like you'd reasonably presume when someone on death row says, 'Gee . . . I think it's terrific you're a lesbian.' (I guess I can reasonably presume you're not the same Kelly McClure from Boulder City, NV, who shared her virginity with me in the shower at Jeff Yinger's house in the summer of '85 for two reasons: I) I can't imagine you're old enough. II) you're a lesbian . . . although she did play softball . . .).' I laughed. He just didn't sound like a death row inmate, or whatever I had been conditioned to believe a death row inmate should sound like. He didn't strike me as scary or sociopathic, just kind of bizarre. 'I've written the magazine before to no avail, and will likely continue to until the government-sanctioned murder of my corporeal being (and maybe my 'soul' too, guess we'll see), as I've got a surplus of time on my hands and a catastrophic dearth of intelligence, hilarity, and awesomeness. I can only draw and work out so much.' I sat staring at my computer absorbing all of this. We might have a shot with this guy. Dozier wasn't the sympathetic, unjustly imprisoned inmate I had first imagined for the story. But we had begun to focus on pharmaceutical companies refusing to sell drugs for executions, leaving states to struggle to carry out the death sentences they had handed down. And at least in that sense, Dozier's story worked. That Dozier would, too, be the first inmate executed with the most newsworthy drug in decades, a pharmaceutical fueling the opioid crisis, and taking tens of thousands of lives a year in the United States alone, made the story feel all the more compelling. I drafted a letter to Dozier. 'I work with VICE and am currently covering a story on the death penalty,' I started. 'Given that your execution is scheduled for November 14 of this year, I wondered if you might be willing to speak with us beforehand. We're interested to hear your story, to better understand life on death row and how you've opted to move your execution forward.' I reluctantly typed out my cell phone number (feeling less than thrilled about handing it over to a convicted killer), then overnighted the letter to Dozier. All I could do now was wait. Excerpted with permission from The Volunteer: The Failure of the Death Penalty in America and One Inmate's Quest to Die with Dignity, by Gianna Toboni. Gianna Toboni is a journalist and author. Formerly a correspondent for VICE, she has won Emmy, duPont-Columbia, and GLAAD Awards, and is on the Forbes' 30 Under 30 list for Media. The Volunteer is her first book. The post A Reporter, a Death Row Inmate, and a Broken System appeared first on Katie Couric Media.
Yahoo
09-03-2025
- General
- Yahoo
A ‘firefighter's firefighter': Remembering the life, legacy of Bobby Connelly
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — Community members are mourning the death of Bobby Connelly, who started with the Nashville Fire Department (NFD) in 1959 and moved through the ranks of firefighter, engineer, captain, and district chief over the course of 53 years. Another former chief from NFD, Buck Dozier, said Connelly will leave behind a huge legacy. 'Many people are going to use two terms this week — legend and hero — and most certainly, that's what he was, but he's more than that for most people, especially firefighters,' Dozier told News 2. 'He heard things from citizens: their screams, their yells, their sobbing, even their good points.' In 2003, Connelly was off-duty when he got a call from his sister-in-law about a fire at NHC Healthcare Center. Connelly's 91-year-old mother was one of 16 casualties in the fire. SEPTEMBER 2023: Firefighter remembers mother on 20th anniversary of NHC nursing home fire Dozier called Connelly a 'firefighter's firefighter' who loved to be where the action was and always looked out for others. 'Somebody would come up to me and say, 'Where is Chief Connelly?' I'd say, 'Turn around.' I said, 'You see where the flames are, the hottest part of the fire?' I said, 'He's either there or he's en route to that position,'' Dozier explained. 'He didn't like to stand in the street. He liked to go in with the men and be a part of what they were trying to do.' After five decades of firefighting, Connelly retired in 2013. The Metro Council named NFD Station No. 9 in his honor just a few months later. In addition, he worked with author Erin Cunningham to detail his storied career in the book 'Refined by Fire: The Bobby Connelly Story.' 'His eyes saw things that most citizens never saw. His hands touched things that most citizens wouldn't touch,' Dozier said. NOVEMBER 2016: Former Nashville fire chief details 53-year career in new book Years ago, Dozier said a wall fell on Connelly at the intersection of 4th Avenue South and Chestnut Street, which almost killed him, but he survived with some broken bones. Dozier added that Connelly's uniform and helmet were often black from confronting danger inside burning buildings. Dozier recalled a conversation he had with Connelly: 'I said he was a great firefighter. He said, 'No, no, Chief, don't ever say that.' He said the best thing that you can ever say about a firefighter [is] 'He was a good firefighter.' And I'm here today to say…Chief Connelly was a good firefighter.' According to Dozier, even in Connelly's late 60s and early 70s, he volunteered to work in the Florida Everglades to help put out wildfires. 'They said he was just as good as the younger guys,' Dozier added. Connelly was also chosen as the model for the firefighter statue at the 9/11 memorial in downtown Nashville. ⏩ Nashville Mayor Freddie O'Connell shared a statement with News 2 about Connelly's death, saying, 'Bobby Connelly showed what it meant to love your city and love your profession. For 53 years, he ran towards danger as a firefighter, and he was an example of selflessness and sacrifice. I am lucky to know him and will miss his spirit. I'm glad his legacy will live on as the fire hall he served in now bears his name.' NFD's hockey team posted to social media mourning the loss of Connelly, adding that at one point, he served as the team's coach. The Nashville Firefighters' Honor Guard also shared a message, saying Connelly had an illness caused by a line-of-duty injury and battled it 'like a true HERO.' Meanwhile, Box 55 — an organization meant to serve Nashville firefighters with on-scene hydration, nutrition, and body temperature regulation — wrote, 'Our Box 55 team is saddened for the loss of a Nashville Fire Department Giant, Chief Bobby Connelly. The city lost a great one but Heaven received a HERO. Thank you Chief for your service and your love for others. It was a blessing to serve you for many years. You will be missed but never forgotten.' A visitation will be held for Connelly at Woodbine Funeral Home: Hickory Chapel from 1 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Wednesday, March 12. The next day, there will be a visitation at Judson Baptist Church from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., followed by a service. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Guardian
18-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘History was attempted to be buried': the true story behind Oscar-nominated Nickel Boys
It was one of the darkest, most shameful episodes in Florida's grotesque history of state-sanctioned racism: dozens of children, most of them Black, beaten or shot to death, or sexually abused in a decades-long reign of terror at a secretive and remote reform school. Early next month at the Academy Awards in Los Angeles, the horrors that befell the students of the notorious Arthur G Dozier School for Boys will be laid bare before the world, courtesy of a best picture nomination for the 'transcendentally moving and frightening film' Nickel Boys, and a best adapted screenplay nod for director RaMell Ross and his co-writer, Joslyn Barnes. The two Black teenagers who are the movie's main protagonists, and the institution they were sent to, are fictional. But the era of Jim Crow segregation laws and white supremacy in which the movie is set was all too painfully real. The adaptation of Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer Prize-winning 2019 novel reveals stark truths about the ordeal the Dozier boys endured, including the abuse and violence inflicted upon them by staff and guards, and how white officials hid the truth for years. 'Quite literally, the boys were buried, and the history was attempted to be buried,' Ross said. 'Now [the Dozier story] is elevated to academic history, to literature history, to like the annals of cinema.' Ross's Nickel Academy is less of a film-maker's visualization of a brutal 1960s deep south, state-run youth rehabilitation facility than an unvarnished replica of Dozier, formally known as the Florida Reform School for Boys from its opening in the tiny panhandle town of Marianna in 1900 to its eventual closure in 2011. In the grounds, a lime-washed building known as the White House was where children as young as six were taken after minor transgressions and chained to tables as they were flogged into unconsciousness. There were allegations by survivors, many of them now deceased, of a 'rape dungeon'; others recalled relentless thrashings with the metal buckle of a leather belt known as 'black beauty'; in real life as well as in the book and movie, some children would disappear in the middle of the night, never to be seen alive again. The bodies of those who did not return joined others uncovered during a three-year dig that began in 2013 by anthropologists from the University of South Florida (USF), whose work provided the inspiration for Whitehead's book and ultimately Ross's historical drama. The USF team was led by Dr Erin Kimmerle, who uncovered human remains in 55 graves. Some were buried within a makeshift cemetery known as Boot Hill, depicted in bleak realism in the movie with crude metal crosses as markers. Others were found elsewhere, several with gunshot wounds or blunt force trauma, or showing 'substantial evidence' of malnutrition or infections. Eight, including two teachers, died in a mysterious dormitory fire in 1914; 11 more fell victim to influenza four years later. Poorly maintained and incomplete state records showed 31 burials between 1914 and 1973, but the USF investigation placed the figure at a minimum of 98 deaths. Not all the bodies were recovered, and in 2019 another 27 'possible' gravesites were discovered. Painstaking research and DNA testing allowed Kimmerle, who acted as an anthropological consultant for Nickel Boys, to positively identify a handful of the victims and bring what she called 'a type of justice' to the families of those who died. One was George Owen Smith who, like one of the main characters in Nickel Boys, was sent to reform school when he was found riding in a stolen car. He was 14 when he disappeared in 1940, and school officials wrote his parents that he had run away and was later found dead from pneumonia. But a witness saw staff taking him to the White House and carrying him out again motionless. Smith's sister, Ovell Krell, told the Guardian in 2014 that his identification and return of his body was 'the end of a long, hard journey'. Kimmerle said she appreciated the accuracy of Nickel Boys in dramatizing many of her team's revelations. She pointed to the clear depiction of a pre-civil rights era in which young Black men and children could be sent to harsh institutions such as Dozier for smoking, truancy, being considered 'incorrigible', or simply having no other place to go. 'There's so many stories, so much death and abuse, and just the injustice of why they were there, and who was there, and all of it,' she said. 'All these boys who died, it was one example after another of injustices before civil rights, like why do these children not have lawyers, why are they arrested without their parents notified, why are they just deemed incorrigible and sent to a labor camp for two years? 'It can be so heavy, and hard to talk about, and when I've spoken about the research or the history, sometimes I feel like I'm leaving the audience so down and depressed. But it's also the story about finding peace and hope for those families, so I really appreciated the [movie's] approach.' Ross said he hoped the Dozier story, and his Oscar-nominated retelling of it, would be seen as a poignant 'movie of the moment'. Donald Trump's administration is attacking diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs; and in Florida, despite an official apology for the Dozier abuses in 2017 and opening of a $20m compensation fund for victims, hard-right governor Ron DeSantis is accused of being 'actively hostile' to the Black community. 'It's made me think about the way in which history is being erased contemporaneously [and] the way in which history can be like a sort of experiential monument,' Ross said. 'The thing about making work about quote unquote justice, and I like to see this film as a sort of visual justice, is that it's always the right time, it just becomes more the right time, because these things seem to never end. 'Hopefully I'm wrong, but I'm sure that it'll be a movie of the moment in 10 years because of the way that things are going and the way things have gone.'
