LAKE COUNTY, FLA. – The year 2024 was a violent, tragic affair for cops and trial lawyers.
On May 30, a man later identified as Alex Lopez burst into a Fruitland Park convenience store and mercilessly gunned down Raied “Ray” Shihadeh. Authorities also arrested a woman and charged her with helping hide him after the murder.
The crime was just one of the shocking stories I helped cover for the Daily Commercial.
In April, a jury found Ian Anselmo guilty of strangling his pregnant stepmother to death in 2019 instead of not guilty by reason of insanity. The defense attorney portrayed the family as “crazy” and cult-like.
In the courts, a jury a jury convicted a former Apopka High School teacher of sexual battery on a foreign exchange student at his home in Mount Dora. Dimitri Kostyunin was sentenced to life in prison.
Another sex case made headlines for a different reason.
The 5th Circuit State Attorney’s Office relied on a new law that would have allowed prosecutors to seek the death penalty for a defendant who rapes a child younger than 12. Faced with that possibility, Joseph Giampa entered a plea for a life sentence instead.
In a case that did go to trial, an elderly man was found not guilty by reason of insanity in the shooting death of his wife. Morris Reynolds shot his wife to death in 2020. He was 80 when sentenced in February.
In one case, prosecutors dropped charges because they had no choice. The man, who embezzled $400,000 from his company, died before he could be tried.
Another defendant got a less permanent break. An appeals court ruled that sheriff’s deputies did an unlawful search while investigating a shooting death at Holiday RV Park. They entered a darkened screened-in porch and confronted the killer without a search warrant.
With drones in the news, including mystery sightings in New Jersey, it was noteworthy when a federal judge sentenced a man to four years in prison for shooting down a sheriff’s drone that caught him in the act of burglary. He took the big hit, in part, because he had 29 prior felonies.
In the category of it can only happen in Florida, a man visiting his mother at the Pennbrooke Fairway community lost part of his arm to an alligator while fishing in a pond.