Odd, strange, or bizarre news stories from Florida

Love hurts: Man arrested for releasing helium balloon with his girlfriend

By Erika Pesantes, Sun Sentinel
7:52 p.m. EST, February 22, 2013

Anthony Brasfield saw romance when he released a dozen heart-shaped balloons into the sky over Dania Beach with his sweetie. A Florida Highway Patrol trooper saw a felony.

Brasfield, 40, and his girlfriend, Shaquina Baxter, were in the parking lot of the Motel 6 on Dania Beach Boulevard when he released the shiny red and silver mylar balloons and watched them float away Sunday morning.

Also watching the romantic gesture: an FHP trooper, who instead noted probable cause for an environmental crime.

Brasfield was charged with polluting to harm humans, animals, plants, etc. under the Florida Air and Water Pollution Control Act.

Endangered marine turtle species and birds, such as wood storks and brown pelicans, seek refuge in John U. Lloyd State Park, about 1.5 miles east of the motel.

Between 2008 and 2012, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement said there were 21 arrests statewide under the rarely used environmental crime statute. The third-degree felony is punishable by up to five years in prison.

The 31-year-old Gainesville resident, who has been in and out of mug shots for charges ranging from grand theft to drug possession to disorderly conduct, recently had a hankering for some dinner squirrel, so he tried to hunt one down with a BB gun.

To improve his chances of taking the squirrel out cleanly, Lloyd decided to tape a bullet to the end of his Pumpmaster 760.

Surprisingly, his MacGyver-esque troubleshooting backfired. Literally:

Lloyd fired the BB gun, causing the BB to strike the cartridge's primer. The cartridge discharged and fragmented, striking Lloyd in the upper arm and lower leg.

He was taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

Lloyd was subsequently charged with discharging a firearm in public and possession of ammunition by a convicted felon.

He later told police he found the cartridge while looking for scrap metal to sell.

As for the squirrel, one commenter suggested he probably died. Laughing, that is.