The 10 wackiest Florida news stories of 2024

They say truth is stranger than fiction, and these wacky Florida news stories from 2024 prove that to be true. 

Born in 2013 with the creation of a Twitter account managed and curated by magazine editor Freddie Campion, the “Florida Man” meme has, over the last decade-plus, become a part of American nomenclature familiar even to those who aren’t terminally online. 

Some credit Florida’s loose open records law with providing endless headlines depicting bizarre and wacky crimes or occurrences pulled off by the titular “Florida man,” while others insist it is simply highlighting the odd culture that has been naturally cultivated in Florida since its founding.  

Both points are arguable—most other states allow reporters and such to comb through incident and arrest reports the same way Florida does, and you can find your fair share of oddballs anywhere in the United States—but regardless of why it stuck, the fact is that it stuck. 

2024 saw the premiere of “It’s Florida, Man,” a new HBO series that invites current or former Floridians to share the stories behind some of the state’s most legendary headlines—the very first episode tells the tale of one Florida man enlisting the help of another Florida man to fulfill his fantasy to have his toes eaten—with reenactments from well-known actors spliced among the retellings from those who lived to tell about it. (If you’ve seen “Drunk History,” it’s a lot like that.) 

Produced by Righteous Gemstones star Danny McBride, “It’s Florida, Man” has already been renewed for a second season, which means the show’s writers will be searching for storylines to share with viewers. They need not worry, there were plenty of headlines to come out of the Sunshine State in 2024 that deserve a deeper look. 

We went ahead and did that work for them, compiling the below list of the wackiest Florida news stories from 2024. It’s hard to rank such chaos, so let’s move through the list chronologically and let you be the judge of what rates as the wackiest “Florida Man (or Woman)” headline of the year. 

1. Florida man drives into the ocean

Thank God for body cameras. Without them, we would never have been treated to one of the best quotes of 2024: “It’s not my fault the truck don’t surf!” 

That was the excuse given by Jason Brzuszkiewicz, who was filmed driving his truck in the surf at New Smyrna Beach on Feb. 6, once police finally caught up to him. “I thought I could surf it,” the suspect told police, inexplicably following that up with, “I thought I was in England.” 

The beach was reportedly closed at the time of the joyride, which led the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office to charge Brzuszkiewicz with failure to pay a vehicular access fee. Small price to pay for 15 minutes of internet fame.

2. Florida man eats chicken every day for 100 days

We came across plenty of alligator-related news in our research for this article, but only one article about a man who seemingly wants to follow the same diet they provide for the gators at any given zoo or alligator farm. 

A man who began to build a following on Instagram for his videos showing him eating raw chicken every day in January began to gain the attention of local and national media come February as he neared 30 days into his experiment. Known as @rawchickenexperiment on Instagram, or just John for short, the man told Vice, “I got really into researching weird diets from around the world. I got into many YouTube rabbit holes about how eating meat is actually really healthy and became obsessed.” 

Important disclaimer: Raw chicken can be contaminated with Campylobacter, Salmonella, or Clostridium perfringens germs and can cause bloody diarrhea, fever, vomiting, stomach cramps, parasites, and more. 

John wrapped up his 100-day challenge in April then transitioned to eating raw animal testicles for social media clout and to advertise some sort of skin cream in June. After 10 days of testicles, he went back to eating raw chicken before his posts mysteriously stopped after July 18 and, because he was protective of his privacy, nobody’s sure what happened to him after that. 

3. Florida man makes bomb threat against himself

Revenge is sweet, but not always worth the trouble. Such was the case for 20-year-old Kyle McHenry, who on Feb. 22 reportedly called Fort Myers police to follow up on a bomb threat that had been made against him earlier in the week, as reported by NBC2. 

When he asked why the person he had blamed for making the threat wasn’t arrested and then started asking unrelated questions about the same supposed suspect, his plan came apart. Upon further questioning, first over the phone and then at the police department, McHenry admitted that he, not his supposed suspect, had sent himself an email stating, “There’s a bomb on your grandpa’s property,” from a separate email account. 

He also reportedly sent himself other emails from the same fake account stating, “I’m going to break in your house and shoot u in the [expletive] head,” and “I’m going to kill you. Watch me.” 

McHenry admitted that he had hatched the plot to falsely accuse his supposed suspect for threatening him as an act of revenge for some previous incident—which may have been imagined for all we know at this point. Instead, McHenry himself was charged with making false reports to police, fraud, and misuse of false evidence.

4. Florida woman exposed as scuba mask-wearing insurrectionist

The insurrectionists who stormed the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, came from all over the United States. Yet you might have already guessed which state was most represented. According to Elias Sorich with Stacker, at 107 arrests documented, Florida ranked No. 1 for the most residents charged with crimes related to the Jan. 6 riots. 

The insurrectionists also showed up in a range of costumes, from the terrifying to the laughingly stupid (looking at you, QAnon Shaman). One Florida woman arrested on Feb. 28 of last year stood out among the crowd for the accessory she wore to the proceedings: a scuba mask. 

Lin Marie Carey, 56, reportedly traveled from Naples to Washington D.C. by bus after hearing about it on a Facebook group. The bus full of Florida ne’er-do-wells departed from Seed to Table grocery store, which gained notoriety during the COVID-19 pandemic for resisting mask mandates. Some masks are OK, though, apparently. 

Carey can be seen in surveillance footage wearing a pair of big, bright green scuba goggles over her head, and at one point in her own self-recorded footage that she handed over to the FBI, she said, “I’m putting my goggles on. I think they’re going to try to tear gas us.” 

After her arrest in February, three years after the fact, she was charged with felony obstruction of an official proceeding and a slew of misdemeanor offenses. 

5. Florida man runs over gator to save neighbor

Not all “Florida Man” stories involve ill-advised crimes. In fact, some are heroic. Walter Rudder is one such Florida Man Hero. Rudder was driving into his neighborhood on the way home in April when he came across a startling sight: an 11-foot alligator dragging his neighbor toward a nearby pond. 

Rudder jumped out of his truck to try to help Rick Fingeret, who reminded Rudder that he could be more of a help back in the truck. “[Rudder] says Fingeret begged him to run the alligator over, hoping it would release its jaws from around his leg,” reported WLBT3. “Rudder did as Fingeret asked, and it worked. The alligator set Fingeret free from its grasp and returned to the water.” 

Fingeret was hospitalized but expected to recover fully while the alligator was captured and relocated. In an interview with WLBT3, Rudder described his harrowing experience: “Alarming is what I would say.” To say the absolute least, yes. 

6. Florida couple create fake winning lottery ticket

When 36-year-old Kira Enders presented a “winning” 500X The Cash scratch-off lottery ticket to officials, they were likely tempted to arrest her on the spot. Yet they humored her, calling the ticket a “non-winner” but taking it for further investigation. When Enders called a week later to check on the ticket, she was asked to come in and talk to a special agent with the Florida Lottery. 

As Patrick McHenry from Fort Myers could have told her, it’s the follow-up call that does you in. It was during this meeting that the truth came out: Enders and her boyfriend, 32-year-old Dakota Jones, had allegedly taped pieces of two separate scratch-off tickets together, then laminated them to conceal the alterations, according to reporting from Fox35 Orlando when news broke of the story in mid-April.

Unlike McHenry, neither Enders nor Jones fully came clean, throwing out a number of excuses for how the mishap might have occurred. Our favorite quote from Fox35’s story involved Jones telling investigators he had warned Enders not to try to turn the ticket in because it looked “jank.” Nevermind the fact that winning tickets have bar codes that would have snuffed this plan out from the get-go, we just want to see a picture of exactly how “jank” this Frankenstein lottery card looked when they presented it. 

Confession or not, the two were charged with forgery/alteration of a lottery ticket with intent to defraud, passing a forged/altered state lottery ticket, and larceny-grand theft of $100,000 or more. 

7. Florida man returns ashes of victim’s mother after theft

Never underestimate the Florida man, for just when you think you have him figured out, he shows you a different side. When a man in Winter Haven woke up one late April morning to find that his car had been stolen from his driveway overnight, he realized that he had lost more than just his vehicle—his mother’s ashes were in the car’s cupholder. 

At some point the next day, however, the car thief made the same realization, and later that afternoon, the victim of the theft went out to his driveway to find the stolen goods returned. No, not the 2023 limited edition Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat Redeye Jailbreak, but the ashes of his mother, who had passed away five years prior. 

“Without having her ashes, I felt like I’m a failure,” the (original) car owner told NBC 6 South Florida. We’re glad he’s reunited with his mother, now could he maybe move her to the mantle? 

8. Florida man buys mask, robs bank across the street

In our second entry involving a criminal whose mask gave them away, 33-year-old Colton Vanhonhenstien might have thought he got away after leaving a bank he illegally entered in June to rifle through the drawers in search of money. No such luck. 

Martin County deputies were notified of the incident by a security system employee who alerted the department that a masked man was robbing a bank that was supposed to be closed, reported Fox 35 Orlando. The mystery man had left by the time deputies arrived at the scene, but all it took was some easy detective work to solve that mystery in a matter of minutes. 

As it turned out, Vanhonhenstien purchased the mask at a convenience store right across the street just before putting it on and entering the unlocked bank. Many questions remain unanswered about this incident: Why was the bank unlocked after hours? How did he know it was unlocked? Was he under the impression that bank tellers leave money lying around a bank unsecured when they leave for the day? 

Whatever his own analysis of the situation, Vanhonhenstien was identified, picked up by police, and charged with burglary. 

9. Florida woman leads police on chase in stolen ambulance

What’s worse than stealing an ambulance from a hospital? Stealing an ambulance from a children’s hospital. 

Back to Fort Myers, where 30-year-old Ariel Marchan-Le Quire allegedly jumped behind the wheel of an ambulance parked outside of Golisano Children’s Hospital and took off with it in June. It didn’t take long for police to track Le Quire down, as ambulances don’t exactly blend into traffic. 

When patrol vehicles spotted her at a nearby gas station, however, she took off, leading police on what turned out to be a short chase. While the entire incident didn’t last long, it sounds like Le Quire got in plenty of in-real-life “Grand Theft Auto” time. After nearly flipping the vehicle, she turned the emergency lights on and kept going. 

“This ambulance is all over the road and it’s running red lights. It’s going to end up killing someone. It’s purposefully, recklessly driving crazy,” an audio clip released by the sheriff’s office said, as reported by WFLA. 

Once they got her into custody, Le Quire was charged with grand theft of a motor vehicle, leaving the scene of a crash, resisting an officer, fleeing and eluding arrest, and theft of emergency equipment. 

A quick Google of Le Quire’s name shows that she just might be a Florida (Wo)Man Hall of Famer. In 2019, she made national headlines and caught charges for illegally possessing animals after she pulled a small alligator out of her yoga pants during a traffic stop. 

10. Florida man feasts in closed Walgreens

Our list ends back where it began: in New Smyrna Beach, where a man faced burglary charges after allegedly trapping himself in a Walgreens until all the employees left, then hanging out and feasting on junk food. 

According to the Miami Herald, the man stayed in the bathroom for five hours only to emerge after closing to snack on Tostitos spinach dip, chips, Reese’s chocolate, and Ghirardelli chocolate bars, washing it all down with some Dr. Pepper and smoking some Newport cigarettes as he went. 

The party ended when the suspect finally tripped an alarm in the store, alerting police to his presence. He faced charges of burglary of an unoccupied structure, larceny/petty theft, resisting an officer without violence, and battery on a law enforcement officer. 

It’s unclear whether the man was dealing with homelessness or hunger, but perhaps the judge could find it in his heart to be lenient in this case regardless. All we know is that, though we don’t condone any of the actions on this list (save for the heroics of Walter Rudder), it would appear that, simply put, criminals in New Smyrna know how to have fun.

This article first appeared on Good Info News Wire and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.