Jacksonville | featured news

A St. Johns County Sheriff’s deputy was injured after being ejected from his motorcycle Wednesday afternoon in a crash on State Road 16 near where it meets St. Francis Road in St. Augustine.
Westbound traffic was stopped following a crash near the intersection about 4:40 p.m. as a marked motorcycle driven by Deputy Thomas Bickhart was heading west in the eastbound lane of SR 16 to get to the scene, according to the Florida Highway Patrol.

Campus police are investigating after two female University of North Florida students reported a man flashed them while pretending to ask for directions late Tuesday night.
The students were walking through parking lot 12, in the 11800 block of U N F Drive, before midnight when a black Hyundai pulled up and the driver asked how to get to Alumni Hall, according to a police incident report.
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The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office is investigating an undetermined death on the Northside Wednesday evening.
The Sheriff’s Office said the death was reported in the 12000 block of Lem Turner Road.
The Times-Union has a reporter heading to the scene.
 
Garrett Pelican: (904) 359-4385

Duval County School Board Chairman Ashley Smith Juarez said she will seek a mediator to help improve how board members function and communicate with each other and with Superintendent Nikolai Vitti.
She suggested mediation in a Wednesday email to board members, saying it could help them all build on the input they provide to Vitti during his annual performance review scheduled for Thursday afternoon.
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A Jacksonville man who pleaded guilty to the sex trafficking of a minor and forcing a teenage survivor of human trafficking back into the sex trade has been sentenced to more than 13 years in prison.
U.S. District Judge Marcia Morales Howard sentenced Gregory Gollett Hodge Jr. to 160 months on Wednesday afternoon at the federal courthouse for his role in trafficking then-16-year-old Alyssa Beck.
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By Denise Smith Amos
denise.amos@jacksonville.com
The director of two charter schools is trying to reboot their image and revive enrollment after negative publicity from earlier this year, when the school’s management company was indicted.
Alan Hall, who leads San Jose Academy, a middle school, and San Jose Preparatory High school said both schools have survived a loss of students when Newpoint Education Partners LLC and three affiliated firms were indicted for white collar crime, money laundering, and grand theft.

A prominent local attorney facing a Florida Bar petition for the emergency suspension of his law license asked the Florida Supreme Court on Wednesday to deny it because its basic claims “fail to meet” the minimum threshold for such legal banishment.
Christopher Chestnut’s 22-page response “expressly denies any allegation” as it asks the state’s highest court to exonerate him in all respects.
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Authorities are working to identify a man whose body was found Monday in the St. Marys River in Charlton County, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
The man, who was found dead near St. George, was described as white with a recently stitched cut on his upper right arm and a tattoo on his upper right back, the GBI said.
Investigators have not yet determined how the man died.
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To commemorate the 15th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City, the Pentagon in Washington D.C. and an airliner over Virginia, the Clay County Amateur Radio Emergency Service and Orange Park Amateur Radio Club operate a “special event station” from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday at Camp Blanding, 5629 Florida 16 W. in Starke.
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Judge Howard McGillin Jr. was one of those rare people happy to return to work Tuesday following the holiday weekend.
McGillin was glad to know he still had his job — just one job — after months of full-time campaigning to remain a family court judge in St. Johns County.
In his first election cycle as a sitting judge, McGillin won a full six-year term in last week’s primary election. To retain the position, McGillin defeated Linda L. Gaustad with 54 percent of the vote.