Sarasota FL

Reported crime in Manatee County took a steep dive in 2025, with officials touting a nearly one-fifth drop countywide. The Manatee County Sheriff’s Office says overall crime fell 19.7 percent last year and is crediting its deputies for the shift, highlighting the numbers in a bold social media graphic that paints a...

Rock legend Dickey Betts — a Florida native who co-founded the influential Allman Brothers Band — has been officially honored by his home state. A pioneering lead guitarist who composed numerous hit songs and revered instrumentals, Betts is best known as the singer and songwriter of the Allman Brothers’ lone Top 5...

Over the years, we’ve written about Gulf Gate’s groovy midcentury ranch homes, its low-slung time-capsule charm and its eclectic strip of mom-and-pop-owned restaurants and bars where the parking is still free. We know it as a place where the locals go and admire its refusal to become overly polished.

Sarasota County deputies are in the middle of a campaign aimed at educating parents and teens on the rules surrounding e-motos or electric motorcycles.

STARKE, Fla. (WWSB) - Florida executed Melvin Trotter, 65, Tuesday evening for the 1986 murder of Virgie Langford, a 72-year-old Palmetto grocery store owner. Jordan Kirkland, communications director for the Florida Department of Corrections, said the sentence was carried out at 6:15 p.m. Feb. 24, 2026, and that the...

Bradenton residents are getting hit with a high-tech twist on an old scam: callers posing as local police, ordering people to pull out large amounts of cash and feed it into a so-called “government currency” machine. Today, Bradenton police urged residents to be on alert, stressing that while two of their officers do...

BRADENTON, Fla. (WWSB) - A wildlife rehab organization is working to help a panhandling pelican that was recently captured on Manatee Beach. “This guy was wandering around Manatee Beach looking for a handout, following people around,” Wildlife Inc. said a social media post. The pelican, not deterred by people...

The Sarasota County Sheriff's Office located a lost hiker on Friday after they went missing in Deer Prairie Creek Preserve.

A 34-year-old man from Sarasota died after his SUV left the roadway and struck multiple trees along Bee Ridge Road before splitting in half, troopers said. The crash happened when a 2018 Toyota RAV4 traveling eastbound on Bee Ridge Road, about 1,000 feet east of Swift Road, veered off the roadway and entered a grassy...

VENICE, Fla. - A woman wanted in Indiana for reckless homicide has been captured in Sarasota County. According to the Grant County Sheriff’s Office, Adria P. Wilkerson, 31, was involved in a deadly, head-on vehicle crash on October 1, 2025, that killed 45-year-old Vicki Colley in front of a high school in Indiana.