Cancer, Asthma, and Death Prowl a Miami Neighborhood
Cancer was killing Ethel Frazier. For a year, the disease wracked her body. Round after round of chemotherapy had left the 64-year-old frail and exhausted. By this past January, she was nearing the end. Ethel’s husband, Walter, couldn’t understand why she was dying. A quiet man settling into retirement — at age 67, bits of gray were beginning to appear in his black hair — he had looked forward to a long life with his sweetheart. [Miami New Times // Oct. 18, 2012]
DJ Seasunz: A Murder Kills a Nightlife Scene
It was 9:45 a.m. on October 11, 2009, when Juan Carlos Portieles parked his beat-up Toyota Camry on a quiet side street in Cutler Bay. Tall and heavyset, with close-cropped brown hair and traces of stubble on his jaw, the 30-year-old DJ walked several blocks to a cluster of condominiums with beige walls and red-tiled roofs. [Miami New Times // Sept. 6, 2012]
Miami Boxer Randall Bailey Looks for Late-Career KOs
On a humid Wednesday night, the Styx Sports Bar & Grill in North Miami Beach smells of Swisher Sweets and stale beer. Patrons lazily shoot pool, and hip-hop blares from the speakers as Randall Bailey feeds a dollar into a punching bag machine. Dressed in all purple — T-shirt, mesh shorts, and an off-color Marlins hat — Bailey pulls the bag down, steps back, winds up, and throws his right fist forward. [Miami New Times // Jul. 5, 2012]
Murder in Little Odessa
Ten seconds after he enters the frame of the surveillance video, he’s gone. The man on the bicycle pulls himself over the curb and begins to pedal down the sidewalk of West Brighton Avenue, headed toward West First Street. The timestamp reads 11:44:49. He moves past cars waiting for the traffic light at Ocean Parkway, past a restaurant, a pharmacy and a supermarket, their signs all in Russian. The day is October 20, just before noon, in Brighton Beach. [The Brooklyn Ink // Nov. 1, 2011]
Soft Porn, Hardening Hearts – A Magazine’s Private Story
The speck bothered Danielle Leder. It had to go. It was nothing more than a small piece of dead skin, or perhaps a stray bit of dust, but against her model’s bright red lips, the mote could not stay. That was all the more apparent on the screen of the expensive high-definition video camera that Leder had acquired for the video shoot. The small brownish spot stood out amidst the sea of red lipstick and pale white skin. [The Brooklyn Ink // Dec. 20, 2011]
Baseball Alum Continues Career Overseas
Former Columbia second baseman Henry Perkins knew the following things about Namur, Belgium, before he decided to move there. Namur is a small, quiet European town. Not at all like Paris or London or even Brussels, the capital that sits 30 miles to the north. [Columbia Spectator // Apr. 30, 2009]