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Staff report/Alachua Chronicle

ALACHUA – Sheri Lynn Hurd, 19, of Trenton, was arrested July 2 and charged with leaving the scene of a crash involving damage to property, burglary of an occupied vehicle, and two counts of battery after allegedly crashing into another car intentionally and then punching the occupants of the car.

The victims, one of whom had a previous short-term relationship with Hurd, told an Alachua Police Department officer that they were driving on U.S. Highway 441 in Alachua at about 9:45 p.m. when Hurd saw them and started driving aggressively, trying to cause a crash.

At one point, Hurd allegedly swerved in front of the victims’ car and hit the brakes, causing the victims’ car to crash into her car. The victims drove into a nearby parking lot to assess the damage to their car.

Hurd allegedly followed them, got out of her car, and began punching one victim in the face. Hurd then allegedly ran around to the other side of the victims’ car, opened the door, got into the car, and started hitting the other victim. She then allegedly pulled that victim out of the car while hitting her. Both victims reportedly sustained visible injuries.

Officers located Hurd near the intersection of U.S. Highway 441 and Northwest 147^th Drive and took her into custody.

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NEWBERRY ‒ Edwin Lee Daniels, 18, of Newberry, was arrested on Saturday, June 24, and charged with two counts of possession of a firearm or ammunition by an individual previously convicted as a juvenile of a crime that would be a felony as an adult.

At about 9:32 p.m., Alachua County Sheriff’s Deputies responded to a report of an intoxicated man inside the Dollar General store in Newberry. The caller said the man had a handgun in his waistband and an extended magazine in his pocket.

A deputy reported that Daniels, who matched the description provided by the caller, was standing outside next to the ice machine when he arrived. The deputy asked Daniels where the gun was, and Daniels reportedly said he did not have a gun but had a “clip” in his pocket.

The deputy reportedly found an extended magazine with 27 rounds of 9 mm ammunition in Daniels’ rear pocket and detained him. He then searched Daniels and did not find a gun but reportedly found another round of 9 mm ammunition in Daniels’ pocket.

When additional deputies arrived, another deputy searched the area around the ice machine and reportedly found a tan Taurus International 9 mm semi-automatic handgun lying behind the ice machine where Daniels had just been standing.

While deputies were conducting their investigation, a family member of Daniels arrived and reportedly said she had seen Daniels with the gun in her home the previous night and had told him he needed to get rid of it. She said she had seen Daniels with the gun again that day and believed he took it with him when he left the house to go to the Dollar General.

Daniels has a juvenile conviction from 2020 for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and he had a warrant for failing to appear at a hearing on a misdemeanor charge of driving without a valid license.

Bail was set at $100,000 by Judge Thomas M. Jaworski.

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GAINESVILLE – Katie Nichole Shaffer, 35, of Alachua, and Janie Elizabeth Shaffner, 38, of Lake City were arrested on June 26 and charged with scheming to defraud Walmart, which is a felony.

The two women worked in the online grocery department at the Gainesville Walmart on Northwest 23^rd Street. While assembling online orders from the shelves of the store in preparation for delivery to Walmart customers, they allegedly took items out to a vehicle for their own use.

They were reportedly caught on video at least 22 times while taking items out of the store from May 7 – June 23. In most cases, Shaffner actually pushed the cart out of the store, but both women allegedly placed the items in the cart. They reportedly stole about $1,400 in merchandise.

Post Miranda, both women reportedly admitted to the scheme and the thefts and implicated each other.

Shaffer was arrested in Alachua County in 2015 on a fugitive warrant from Tennessee for kidnapping and theft, and she also has a criminal record in Arizona. She has no local criminal history, and Judge Thomas Jaworski released her on her own recognizance.

Shaffner has no criminal history. Judge Jaworski also released her on her own recognizance.

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• Affordable Housing Advisory Committee – Two vacancies, including one member actively engaged as a not-for-profit provider of affordable housing and one member who represents employers within the County.
• Alachua County Housing Authority Board – Two vacancies, including one alternate and one tenant alternate.
• Arts Council of Alachua County – One citizen at large vacancy.
• Citizen Climate Advisory Committee – Four citizen at large vacancies.
• Citizens Disability Advisory Committee – Four citizens at large and one alternate vacancy.
• Economic Development Advisory Committee – Three vacancies, including one member actively engaged with economic development organizations, one School Board representative, and one Santa Fe College representative.
• Health Care Advisory Board – One alternate vacancy.
• Historical Commission – One citizen at large and one alternate vacancy.
• Housing Finance Authority – Three citizens at large vacancies, with one being knowledgeable in labor, finance, or commerce.
• Human Rights Board – Four vacancies, including one citizen at large, one alternate, one lending institution representative, and one residential rental manager.
• Infrastructure Surtax Oversight Board – Three vacancies, including one Alachua County resident, one alternate, and small cities (alternate) member (not Gainesville).
• Local Planning Agency – One citizen at large vacancy.
• Recreation & Open Space Advisory Committee – One citizen at large vacancy.
• Regional Transit System Advisory Board – Three vacancies, including one citizen who is one (or more) of the following: Chamber of Commerce Representative, member of the environmental community, member of the MTPO Citizen's Advisory Committee; one citizen who is one (or more) of the following: major employer in the local area, senior citizen, person with a disability; and one citizen who is one (or more) of the following: regular user of transit system, UF student, SFC student, member of a neighborhood and/or homeowners association.
• Rural Concerns Advisory Committee – Three vacancies, including one actively involved in agriculture or silviculture, one representative of the Alachua County Extension Office, and one resident residing in the Unincorporated Area Outside Urban Cluster designated in the Alachua County Comprehensive Plan.
• Tourist Development Council – One hotel owner or operator vacancy.
• Value Adjustment Board – One School Board representative vacancy.
• Victim Services and Rape Crisis Center Advisory Council – Two citizens at large vacancies.

ALACHUA ‒ Jacob David Steinkoetter, 18, has been charged as an adult with armed robbery, fleeing from an officer and tampering with evidence after allegedly threatening a convenience store clerk with a gun two days before he turned 18.

On June 6, an Alachua Police Department officer responded to a report of an armed robbery at the Circle K at 16700 N.W. U.S. Highway 441 in Alachua. A store employee told him that Steinkoetter had taken two fountain drinks with a value of $2.56 from the store.

The employee said Steinkoetter acted like he was paying for the drinks at the self-checkout register, then left and got into a red Dodge Charger. A store clerk reportedly followed him into the parking lot and asked him to come inside and pay for the drinks. Steinkoetter allegedly reached under the seat of the car, produced a revolver and pointed it at the clerk, saying, “I’m not worried about it – are you?”

Steinkoetter then reportedly drove away and picked up a friend at a nearby motel. APD officers saw the car traveling southbound on U.S. Highway 441 and activated their lights and sirens, but Steinkoetter allegedly failed to stop.

During the short pursuit, Steinkoetter was reportedly seen throwing several items out of the car, including a scale, a firearm and an unknown amount of drugs that were believed to be “molly.”

Formal charges were filed in the case on June 22. Judge William Davis set bail at $165,000 when he ordered that Steinkoetter be prosecuted as an adult. Judge Thomas Jaworski set bail at the same amount on June 28. Arraignment in that case is scheduled for July 10.

Steinkoetter was previously moved to the adult jail after allegedly threatening an inmate in the juvenile detention facility with an improvised stabbing weapon on June 8, his 18th birthday. Judge Susan Miller-Jones set bail at $100,000 in that case.

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BY JENNIFER CABRERA/Alachua Chronicle

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – At the June 27 Alachua County Commission meeting, Commissioners Ken Cornell and Chuck Chestnut indicated that they will likely vote to stop the proposed Newberry meat processing plant at the next opportunity.

Although discussion of the plant was not on the agenda, it came up at multiple times during the meeting, including right at the beginning, during the adoption of the agenda.

Cornell said he had intended to bring up the issue during the discussion of a budget amendment for American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds that was moved from the consent agenda to the regular agenda as part of the motion to adopt the agenda. 

Plant is on July 10 and July 11 agendas

After the agenda passed, County Manager Michele Lieberman said that the meat processing facility is scheduled to be discussed in a joint meeting with the City of Newberry on July 10; the County Commission also has a discussion planned for their July 11 meeting. 

Chestnut said he didn’t want to wait until July 10 to get an update on the meat processing facility: “We should have an opportunity as a board to discuss what is our next move? What is going on with this? And where do we stand in terms of the funding? I think that’s important… I don’t want people to think we’re trying to hide something or do something behind the scenes. Let’s do it upfront and just get an update… Where do we go from here since the Governor vetoed the funding?”

Chair Anna Prizzia said an update is fine, “but we did already let the public know that we would be talking about this on July 10 and 11, so I think that if we really, actually want to hear from all the public that have wanted to weigh in on this, they’re expecting that we’re going to talk about this on July 10 and 11 and did not know that it was going to be brought up at this meeting. So I feel like it actually feels a little sneakier… to do this today and have an in-depth conversation on it today, when it wasn’t on an agenda.”

Chestnut said he didn’t want to vote on it; he just wanted an update. The agenda was adopted, and the meeting moved on to the General Public Comment period, during which several speakers advocated for canceling the project.

County Manager: State funds can be requested for future phases

During the agenda item on the ARPA funds, Lieberman told the Board that the Governor had vetoed the appropriation of $1.75 million in State funds for the meat processing plant and said, “Staff will pursue USDA sources of funds allocated for small-scale facilities… The Board will be considering the Draft Work Scope for soliciting a Developer/Operation P3 [Public Private Partnership] partnership; that is what is on the agenda for July 11… As I said earlier, the joint meeting with Newberry… will be on July 10 and will include the overall agreement for the Environmental Park.” Lieberman said staff hoped to have proposals back to the board in the fall and that State funding could again be requested for future phases of the project, which could include expanding refrigeration, meat hanging space, additional services to small ranchers, workforce training, and food entrepreneurs.

Cornell said he wanted to have a discussion about the facility: “Let me first say, Chair Prizzia, that you have carried this project, I think, and you have done it in, what I’m gonna say, in a very brave fashion. I appreciated your op-ed that you wrote, I didn’t necessarily agree with it all, but I know this has been a project of yours, and I know that the veto was probably a disappointment, and I know that you would like to continue this project. I heard that loud and clear.”

Cornell said he thought it was an “off-ramp” when the State budget included only $1.75 million instead of the full amount needed. When the $1.75 million allocation was vetoed, he said, “I thought to myself, this is definitely an off-ramp.” He said that the current direction to staff is to move forward with the project, and he wanted to change that direction. He read from a list of “community needs… from east Gainesville to homeless assistance to what’s going on across the street [at the City of Gainesville] to housing to re-entry to Animal Services, the GrowHub.” He said ARPA funds could also be used for the City of Gainesville’s proposed Cultural Arts Center. 

No second for Cornell’s motion to discontinue planning for the facility

Cornell made a two-part motion to approve the budget amendment that was in the original agenda item and direct staff to discontinue working on the meat processing plant, cancel the agenda item for the joint meeting with the City of Newberry on July 10 – “just this item” – and ask staff to bring back recommendations for alternative uses for the previously-allocated $2.5 million in County ARPA funds.

Prizzia agreed that she had worked on the project a long time and that she thought she and the citizens who had spoken earlier in the meeting have “a lot of the same goals in common. Working towards local meat processing is actually really critical to a lot of the issues that we’re talking about: animal cruelty, social justice, and opportunities for good workforce development, and issues around climate change and the environment.”

Prizzia said she has been accused of being underhanded, but she’s passionate about the work she does: “That’s part of what being a commissioner is, is representing the voices and the work that you believe is good and right for the community and that you were elected to do, and I ran on local food.” She described the industrial meat production system and said, “We are complicit in that system, a broken system. Just like we have a broken system of incarceration… So if we want to contribute and change the way that we are contributing to the broken system, the first step in that is having local control.”

Prizzia accused Cornell of “putting words in the mouth” of the other county commissioners, who have voted for the plant every time it has come up for a vote.

“So you keep putting words in their mouth that they want off-ramps, and maybe they do, but I think they cautiously understand that this is an important issue.” She said there is a small number of vocal community members who are against the facility and “there’s been a national vegan organization organizing against it, [but] that does not tell me that the citizens of Alachua County don’t want this.”

Prizzia said she was “frustrated” that Cornell was trying to stop the plant “at a meeting when it’s not on the agenda… just because you don’t think it’s something that we should do.”

Speaking to the public, she added, “While I know that we don’t agree on this individual project, I hope you know that we agree 100 percent on the way that our animals are treated in the animal industry and the fact that we need to eat less meat, and we need to eat better meat, and we need to be working on regenerative agriculture… I have never tried to hide anything… This project is a passion of mine, it is something that I care deeply about because it is a large part of our local food system.”

Commissioner Mary Alford wanted to wait until July 10 and “hear from the public, give the public a chance to comment… But I can’t support the motion, which I don’t believe was seconded, because I do believe that we need to give the public a chance to comment.”

Commissioner Marihelen Wheeler also did not want to make a decision before meeting with the Newberry City Commission.

Chestnut said he was with Cornell “to some degree, but I think it’s important to hear from the City of Newberry, in terms of their reactions to the veto of the funding from the Governor.”

Cornell said he had no problem waiting until July 10 but added, “I preliminarily moved forward in December; I regret that now because I think we could have spent some more time looking at other things. But I did that, so now I’m doing everything I can to change that… Hopefully we can change direction on July 10 or 11.”

Cornell made a motion to approve staff’s recommendation for the ARPA funds budget amendment, which was to move funds that had been allocated to broadband projects into the general fund; the funds will still be “cordoned off” for broadband projects, which will be discussed in July.

The motion passed unanimously.

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