LOS ANGELES (AP) — Authorities have arrested at least one person in connection with Matthew Perry’s death from an accidental ketamine overdose last year, a law enforcement official tells The Associated Press.

The official was not authorized to discuss details of the ongoing investigation and spoke to AP on condition of anonymity. Authorities have scheduled a news conference in Los Angeles to announce details in the case later Thursday morning.

Los Angeles police said in May that they were working with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service with a probe into why the 54-year-old had so much of the surgical anesthetic in his system.

An assistant found Perry face down in his hot tub on Oct. 28, and paramedics who were called immediately declared him dead.

His autopsy, released in December, found that the amount of ketamine in his blood was in the range used for general anesthesia during surgery.

The decades-old drug has seen a huge surge in use in recent years as a treatment for depression, anxiety and pain. People close to Perry told coroner’s investigators that he was undergoing ketamine infusion therapy.

But the medical examiner said Perry’s last treatment 1 1/2 weeks earlier wouldn’t explain the levels of ketamine in his blood. The drug is typically metabolized in a matter of hours. At least two doctors were treating Perry, a psychiatrist and an anesthesiologist who served as his primary care physician, the medical examiner’s report said. No illicit drugs or paraphernalia were found at his house.

Ketamine was listed as the primary cause of death, which was ruled an accident with no foul play suspected, the report said. Drowning and other medical issues were contributing factors, the coroner said.

Perry had years of struggles with addiction dating back to his time on “Friends,” when he became one of the biggest television stars of his generation as Chandler Bing alongside Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc and David Schwimmer for 10 seasons from 1994 to 2004 on NBC’s megahit sitcom.

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Balsamo reported from New York.

Now he’s 17 and about to find out how much of his life will be spent in prison.

Berger-Smith quietly pleaded no contest on June 12 to five criminal charges, including sexual battery and kidnapping, a charge that would land an adult in prison for life. The plea came with no promise of leniency. Prosecutors are going to ask for a 30-year sentence followed by lifetime sex offender probation, said State Attorney’s Office spokesman Aaron Savitski.

Broward Circuit Judge Peter Holden is scheduled to decide Berger-Smith’s fate at a hearing Friday.

Minors cannot be sentenced to life without parole in Florida for any offense other than murder, and appeals courts are frequently asked to weigh in on whether judges went too far when imposing prison terms on teenagers.

Defense lawyer James Lewis said this week he’s not expecting a slap on the wrist for his client.

Prosecutors announced in August 2022, two months after the crime was committed, that Berger-Smith would be charged as an adult, citing the severity of the crime. According to police reports, Berger-Smith told the victim he wanted to add her to his “collection,” that he had AIDS and that he was looking to impregnate her.

There has been no indication that the defendant actually had AIDS or HIV, the virus that causes the fatal disease.

In a motion seeking leniency, Lewis said his client was too young at the time of the offense to fully appreciate how wrong it was.

“Numerous scientific studies demonstrate that a 14-year-old brain is not fully developed, which is a primary reason why we have a juvenile justice system,” he wrote.

The victim will have the opportunity to make a statement before Holden imposes his sentence.

Rafael Olmeda can be reached at rolmeda@sunsentinel.com or 954-356-4457.

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A mailer from Tony’s PAC features a picture of him with Harris, paired with a quote from former President Barack Obama.

It’s notable for the speed. The mailer from the Broward First PAC arrived in Democratic voters’ mailboxes in Broward County on Friday, just 20 days after Harris entered the presidential race when President Joe Biden ended his campaign for a second term.

Harris has generated enormous excitement among Democratic voters — exactly the supporters he needs in the four-way primary for sheriff. (A Florida Atlantic University poll released Wednesday found that 94% of likely Democratic voters in the state said they’d vote Harris for president).

The winner of the Democratic primary for sheriff — Tony, Steve Geller, David Howard or Al Pollock — faces only nominal opposition from an independent candidate in November, and is virtually certain to win the general election.

The photo of the sheriff in uniform standing next to the vice president was taken in March, on the day Harris toured the site of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas mass shooting to discuss gun-violence prevention efforts. The photo was posted months ago on Tony’s Instagram page.

The Broward First mailer is one of many about the sheriff’s race landing in Democratic voters’ mailboxes from candidates and their associated political committees.

The mailing featuring Harris is careful. It doesn’t state that there’s an endorsement of Tony from Harris or Obama.

Its theme is “change,” given that Harris would be the nation’s first woman president and the first with parents who were from Jamaica and India. It reminds voters that Tony changed the agency as “the first African American to serve as Broward County’s sheriff.”

In case all that’s too subtle, the Obama quote states, “We are the change we seek.”

There’s an ironic element to Tony’s Broward First committee paying for a mailer featuring Harris.

Some of the financial muscle behind Broward First comes from Republicans close to Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is not exactly a fan of the Democratic presidential nominee. Example of a DeSantis comment: “Her tenure as VP has been disastrous.”

Tony is sheriff because of DeSantis, and the Stoneman Douglas massacre.

DeSantis appointed Tony in 2019 after he suspended previous Sheriff Scott Israel. The governor charged Israel with incompetence and neglect of duty in connection with the 2018 school massacre, in which 17 people were killed and 17 injured, and the 2017 mass shooting at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, in which five people were killed and six injured.

In 2020, when Tony ran and won a full term as sheriff, his political action committee Broward First got fundraising help from big-name Republican DeSantis allies. As he geared up for the 2024 election, the Republican heavyweights close to the governor again helped raise money for Broward First.

Since Broward First geared up its fundraising for this year’s campaign in the spring of last year, it has raised $820,000. About two-thirds came during the second six months of 2023.

Voters have received some negative information about Tony as well. Democrats received an anti-Tony, pro-Geller mailer from a committee called “Honesty and Integrity for Broward Citizens.”

“Gregory Tony is a proven liar who is not fit to serve,” it declares above a picture of the incumbent.

The flip side declares that “Our current Sheriff has lied and broken the rules time and time again.”

The beneficiary of the mailer, Geller, is shown in a picture from his time in the Plantation Police Department and praised as a candidate of “Integrity. Leadership. Experience.”

And it attempts to remind voters of Tony’s links to DeSantis including a news headline when DeSantis called Tony a favorite Democrat. It came from December 2023, when DeSantis was seeking the Republican presidential nomination. Asked to name his favorite Democrat in Florida during a CNN town hall, he said Tony was one of the “good ones.”

The committee has taken in $172,000, according to reports filed with the Florida Division of Elections. All but $7,000 came via four contributions on July 6 and July 10, from Mark Groban, a family friend, of Rockville, Md.

Anthony Man can be reached at aman@sunsentinel.com and can be found @browardpolitics on Bluesky, Threads, Facebook and Mastodon.

Officer Johnny Alejandro Mateo faces one count of digital voyeurism, police department spokesperson Lt. Antonio Gonzalez said in a news release Wednesday night.

Gonzalez did not provide information about what led to Mateo’s arrest but said Mateo was being investigated by Sunrise Police for an incident that happened while he was off duty. Mateo, who was hired in 2017, was placed on administrative the day of his arrest.

Sunrise Police spokespersons did not return an email or a voicemail Wednesday night seeking information on their investigation.

Mateo was no longer held in the Broward County jail as of Wednesday night. Court records pertaining to the charge were not available.

This is a developing story, so check back for updates. Click here to have breaking news alerts sent directly to your inbox.

But prosecutor William Sinclair told jurors Wednesday that Palmer, 63, died shortly after 3 p.m. that April 13, a conclusion drawn not from expert medical testimony but from a handy piece of technology — the smartwatch on the victim’s wrist.

Palmer’s watch showed her heart beating regularly until there was a sudden spike in her heart rate, followed almost immediately by nothing, Sinclair said. And phone records show she was not alone. Her husband, Patrick Palmer, was with her.

Jurors began deliberations Wednesday in Patrick Palmer’s first-degree murder trial. If convicted, he faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison.

The defendant, 57, originally told police that he shot his wife during an argument about his continued drug use — she had threatened to leave him if he relapsed again.

On the stand this week, he retracted his confession and said he could not specifically remember the circumstances surrounding his wife’s shooting.

The victim was shot twice in the head. The first shot did not penetrate the skull, according to trial testimony.

Palmer admitted his drug addiction and the argument with his wife, but defense lawyer Dione Trawick told the jury that he was incapacitated by drug use and blood loss after a suicide attempt when he gave his first statement to police.

“He was on a binge,” Trawick said. “He told you that. He doesn’t know what happened, but that doesn’t mean he killed his wife. He doesn’t know because he doesn’t remember because he was on a binge.”

Palmer had no financial motive to kill his wife because they were married and legally co-owners of their Pompano Beach home and the Chit Chat’s business, she said.

Sinclair scoffed at her account and the notion that someone else, perhaps Patrick Palmer’s drug supplier, could have committed the murder. There was too much cash lying around in the house, thousands of dollars that would certainly have been stolen if someone other than the defendant committed the murder, Sinclair said.

“So a drug dealer went into this home, loaded with cash, and didn’t take a dime?” he asked incredulously. “And killed her with a gun that was already in the home?”

Patrick Palmer used his wife’s phone to send phony messages to her friends to fool them into believing she was still alive after April 13, 2018, Sinclair said. But worried friends asked the Broward Sheriff’s Office to conduct a wellness check on April 17. It was then that the body was discovered. Patrick Palmer was found lying face down on his bed, his wrists slashed, holding a wooden heart that read, “Pat and Sherry Forever Soulmates.”

Jurors deliberated for about 90 minutes on Wednesday and will return Thursday.

Rafael Olmeda can be reached at rolmeda@sunsentinel.com or 954-356-4457. 

The attorneys Tuesday evening filed a motion for a stay and a broader brief that also argued Cole should be spared execution because of abuse he suffered as a teen at the state’s notorious Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys. Gov. Ron DeSantis on July 29 signed a death warrant for Cole, who was convicted in the 1994 murder of a Florida State University student in the Ocala National Forest.

The motion and the brief said the Supreme Court should require a Marion County circuit judge to hold an evidentiary hearing on the Parkinson’s disease issue. The brief said Cole, who has had Parkinson’s symptoms since 2017, “experiences shaking in both of his arms from his neck to his fingertips and in his legs.”

“Cole’s Parkinson’s symptoms will make it impossible for Florida to safely and humanely carry out his execution because his involuntary body movements will affect the placement of the intravenous lines necessary to carry out an execution by lethal injection,” the brief said.

Cole’s lawyers also wrote that he “faces a substantial risk of illness by injury and needless suffering.”

“When placing an intravenous line, each failed attempt creates a one-and-done for that vein,” the brief said. “Each attempt is singularly painful, and the pain will only escalate with each successive attempt to place an intravenous line. Should FDOC (the Florida Department of Corrections) fail to find a peripheral vein in Cole’s arms or legs, the lethal injection protocol directs the placement of a central intravenous line. The skill needed to do this is beyond an average person capable of placing intravenous lines in the arms or legs. The central vein location includes the groin, the neck, and below the collarbone.”

But Marion County Circuit Judge Robert Hodges last week rejected the Parkinson’s disease argument as part of a broader ruling that allowed the planned execution to move forward. Hodges wrote, in part, that the claim was “untimely” because Cole has long known about the Parkinson’s symptoms but did not raise the issue until after the death warrant was signed.

Hodges also wrote that he found the Parkinson’s disease argument “without merit” and that Cole “failed to allege that medical personnel have previously had problems finding a vein in his arm or that he has previously suffered pain during the placement of an intravenous line. Instead, he merely speculates that he will suffer because of his involuntary body movements.”

“The placement of an intravenous line in a patient with body movements is neither unique nor rare in the medical field,” Hodges added.

Cole, 57, was sent to Death Row in the February 1994 murder of Florida State University student John Edwards, who went to the Ocala National Forest to camp with his sister, a student at Eckerd College, court records show.

Cole and another man, William Paul, joined the brother and sister at their campsite. After they decided to walk to a pond, Cole knocked Edwards’ sister to the ground and ultimately handcuffed her, the records said. Paul took the sister up a trail, and Edwards died from a slashed throat and blows to the head that fractured his skull, according to the court records. Edwards’ sister was sexually assaulted and was tied to two trees the next morning before freeing herself. (In most cases, The News Service of Florida does not identify sexual-assault victims by name.)

Along with raising the Parkinson’s disease issue, Cole’s attorneys argue that his death sentence should be vacated because of abuse at the state’s now-closed Dozier reform school. Cole was at the Marianna school in 1984 and suffered abuse such as rape and beatings, according to Tuesday’s brief and arguments filed in the circuit court.

Cole’s attorneys said the jury that recommended a death sentence did not know about the abuse he suffered at Dozier. Also, the attorneys have pointed to a law that passed this year to compensate some victims of abuse at Dozier, though the law would not apply to Cole.

“Cole’s jury was not told about the compelling mitigation that Cole was a student at Dozier, where he experienced rape and other horrific methods of abuse,” Tuesday’s brief said. “If Cole’s jury had known about the severe abuse … at Dozier, and Florida’s willingness to acknowledge the severe problems at Dozier to the extent that designated victims are entitled to reparations, there is a reasonable probability the newly discovered evidence would yield a less severe sentence. There is a reasonable probability a jury presented with the newly discovered information would recommend a sentence of life for Cole.”

But Hodges last week ruled that “evidence regarding defendant’s (Cole’s) treatment while he

attended the Dozier School is not newly discovered evidence.” The judge said Cole’s lawyers unsuccessfully raised the issue of his treatment at Dozier in previous appeals.

“The court finds that although (the) defendant is using a different argument, he is attempting to relitigate the same issue he raised in two prior motions,” Hodges wrote.

Attorney General Ashley Moody’s office faces a Friday deadline for filing briefs at the Supreme Court.

Gavin Dorvil, 19, of Lauderdale Lakes, was arrested Tuesday night at Broward Health Medical Center. Dorvil was speeding in a 2023 Tesla Model 3 west on Northwest Sixth Street, approaching the intersection of Northwest 27th Avenue shortly before 4 p.m. Sunday, according to the Broward Sheriff’s Office. At the same time, a 2023 Dodge Durango was heading south on Northwest 27th Avenue, approaching the same intersection west of Fort Lauderdale.

Dorvil crashed into the driver’s side of the Dodge, forcing both cars southwest, the Sheriff’s Office said. The Dodge then crashed into a 2024 Chevrolet Trax that was stopped on Northwest Sixth Street at the intersection, flipping the Chevrolet upside down.

The force continued to move the Tesla and Dodge southwest, where the cars crashed through a fence around the Forest Lawn Memorial Gardens Central cemetery, the Sheriff’s Office said. Everyone in the three cars, a total of five people, was taken to Broward Health Medical Center in Fort Lauderdale.

Lisa Jackson, the driver of the Dodge, and her passenger Geraldine Francis were pronounced dead at the hospital, the Sheriff’s Office said. A minor girl who was also riding in the Dodge was in critical condition.

Jackson, Francis and the minor girl whose name was not released were a family from Bermuda, Bermuda’s daily newspaper the Royal Gazette reported. Francis was Jackson’s mother, the newspaper reported. Jackson’s daughter is the minor girl who survived.

Alison Hill, the chief executive operator of Argus Group, said in a statement to the Bermuda newspaper that Jackson was a former employee of the insurance and financial services company. They had traveled to Florida as Jackson’s daughter, Kumani, was going to start attending university in the state, Hill’s statement to the newspaper said.

The Sheriff’s Office did not provide information on Dorvil’s condition after the crash or the driver of the Chevrolet, Jasmyne Thomas.

Dorvil faces two counts of vehicular homicide and one count of reckless driving causing serious bodily injury, the Sheriff’s Office said in a news release Wednesday. Other charges may be added. He had not been booked into the jail as of Wednesday evening.

Carey Codd, a Sheriff’s Office spokesperson, said in an email Tuesday to the South Florida Sun Sentinel that deputies found a gun at the crash scene that they believe came from the Tesla.

Traffic Homicide Unit detectives asked that Internal Affairs representatives “determine if any BSO units were pursuing the Tesla prior to the crash,” Codd said. Internal Affairs representatives came to the scene and began reviewing, he said.

The two deputies are now on “restricted administrative assignment” while Internal Affairs investigates, Codd said in an email. Codd said he could not answer questions about how the deputies were involved prior to the crash. The Sheriff’s Office has not released the deputies’ identities.

A witness shared a video on Facebook shortly after the crash that showed the mangled Dodge and Tesla stopped at the edge of the cemetery as many bystanders watched people attempt to rescue the people inside the Dodge.

Multiple men could be seen reaching into the Dodge, and two people were removed and laid down on the cemetery lawn. Two deputies were seen pulling a young man from the passenger’s side of the destroyed Tesla.

The violent crash triggered an automated call for help from the iPhone of one of the people injured, according to a 911 call released Wednesday to the Sun Sentinel.

“The owner of this iPhone was in a severe car crash and is not responding to their phone,” the robocall said to 911, as sirens wailed and muffled voices could be heard in the background.

Sun Sentinel staff writer Shira Moolten contributed to this report.

The murder of Tabares was shocked her friends and family because it happened suddenly and apparently without motive. Serrano, 55, and Tabares, 21, were fellow members of a Broward gym who were out partying with friends in November 2019 at a World of Beer pub in Coconut Creek.

Jurors learned during the June trial that Serrano and Tabares were seen leaving together in Tabares’ car. The following morning, police were at Serrano’s home in Coral Springs trying to determine why Tabares was lying in her driveway, half in and out of her car, with a gunshot wound to her head.

Police questioned Serrano about the shooting, but she gave them conflicting stories, first denying that she even knew the victim and later admitting they were friends. The murder weapon was in Serrano’s bedroom.

Second-degree murder carries a maximum sentence of life in prison, but Broward Circuit Judge Barbara Duffy could have imposed a lesser sentence if she determined it was warranted. She did not.

The victim’s mother, Isabel Tavares, told Duffy she would never recover from her daughter’s death.

“The day this woman took my daughter’s life, she took my whole life with her, because she was my all,” she said in court.

Rafael Olmeda can be reached at rolmeda@sunsentinel.com or 954-356-4457. 

All of them had human remains inside.

Sunshine State Sonar, a team of volunteer divers known for solving missing persons cases across Florida, visited Broward County over the last few weeks to search for the remains of a missing mother and child, inadvertently locating two other cars owned by people missing from the area for years.

On Saturday, the team says they successfully found what they were looking for: the remains of Doris Wurst and her 3-year-old daughter, Caren, reported missing from Plantation in November 1974. But in the process, they uncovered cars linked to the missing persons cases of Bernie Novick, an 83-year-old World War II veteran, and Eduardo Graterol, 31, who never came home from a party at a friend’s house.

Volunteer dive teams like Sunshine State Sonar are not new to the area, though the sheer number of finds in a matter of weeks has made local headlines. Together, divers located hundreds of cars and at least six missing people in Florida over the course of 2023 alone.

“There’s like a thousand cars in water in Miami-Dade and Broward,” Mike Sullivan, one of the founders of Sunshine State Sonar, told the South Florida Sun Sentinel on Tuesday.

The blue Honda Civic

The first find came in late July: Sunshine State Sonar was looking for Wurst and her daughter, and assisting in a search for a missing Fort Lauderdale woman with Alzheimer’s disease, when they found a submerged vehicle in a retention pond along southbound Interstate 75 at the Miramar Parkway exit in Miramar on July 30.

The Florida Highway Patrol hasn’t confirmed it, but the company said the car was a blue 2011 Honda Civic that, when last seen, was being driven by Eduardo Paul Graterol, who was reported missing by the Pembroke Pines Police Department in 2018.

He had been missing since Oct. 21, 2018 from his home in Pembroke Pines. He was last seen at a party in Fort Lauderdale.

The body in the submerged vehicle has not been positively identified, the Florida Highway Patrol said in a news release. DNA results are pending, as is the cause of the crash that caused the car to end up underwater.

The 1999 Buick LeSabre

The second find came last weekend.

Bernie Novick was 83 years old when he left his wife of 55 years in their Plantation condo and never returned. On Monday, the same Plantation Police detective who had searched for him back in 2004 called Novick’s family, his son said: Novick’s silver 1999 Buick LeSabre had been found in a lake not too far away from where he lived.

“It was a very emotional situation,” Novick’s youngest son, Joey, told the South Florida Sun Sentinel on Tuesday.

Bernie Novick grew up in a Jewish family in Brooklyn, his son said, before World War II broke out. He was drafted at age 20 and served in the artillery unit, stationed in North Africa, Italy and France. Later, he liked to joke to his family that he had the highest rank in the military and personally helped Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill win the war. As a kid, Joey Novick believed him.

Yet it was not war but the pain Bernie Novick felt towards the end of his life that became unmanageable, his son said. He had begun suffering from spinal degeneration and had to use a walker. Joey Novick recalled visiting Florida from his home in New Jersey to help his mother take care of his father, bringing him food and taking him to see doctors. In July 2004, shortly after Joey Novick returned to New Jersey, he got a call from his mother: his father had disappeared.

He flew back. For three weeks, they looked for any sign of Novick. Divers with the Plantation Fire Department searched nearby bodies of water. A few TV stations ran his picture, but nothing turned up. For the next 20 years, Joey Novick surmised that his father had died by suicide.

“At the time I thought what had happened was he decided that the pain was too much and decided to take his own life, possibly,” he said. “And I sort of moved on.”

Plantation Police wrote in a release that the man had “numerous health issues” and his wife said he suffered from depression.

Five years after Bernie Novick disappeared, the family was able to declare him legally dead. They gathered in Florida and sat Shiva for him, telling stories over a big meal at a local diner, the kind of thing Novick loved to do when he was alive.

“The only thing missing at that dinner was my dad,” Joey Novick recalled.

The ceremony brought his family as much closure as they could get. Joey Novick’s mother, who went on living alone in the Plantation condo, died in 2012, eight years after her husband disappeared.

Then, this past Saturday, divers with Sunshine State Sonar went to Plantation. But they weren’t looking for Novick. They were looking for Wurst and her 3-year-old daughter when they happened to locate another car in a nearby lake at 10151 SW First St. about an hour before.

“We knew it wasn’t gonna be Doris and Karen, so we left it behind,” said Sullivan, the co-founder of the diving team. “We had every intention of diving it, just not at that moment.”

They thought it might just be a stolen car. It was not. On Sunday, detectives with the Plantation Police Department met with Broward Sheriff’s Office divers, who pulled Novick’s 1999 Buick from the lake.

Even though family members were notified about the find, Detective Robert Rettig, a spokesperson for the police department, declined to provide a name because police still have to officially identify the remains using DNA or dental records.

“Within all likelihood this is going to be him,” Rettig said. “It’s his car and the remains are consistent. However, we aren’t going to verify that because we need to do our due diligence.”

In addition to missing people, Sunshine State Sonar divers have located a cement mixer in a lake in Deerfield Beach and a U-Haul truck in Lauderdale Lakes; with no people to identify, the stories behind them are even more of a mystery. Sullivan wonders if they’re kids sending them into the water for fun or associated with more serious crimes. His team has since left the area. But in about a month, they’ll be back to help dredge up more cars.

Just Tuesday afternoon, about 2:30 p.m., another car was found in a canal near 8400 W. Oakland Park Blvd. in Sunrise, police say. There was a body inside.

Sullivan said his team was not behind the discovery.

“At this time, the identity of the deceased, the vehicle description, and the cause of death are being investigated,” said Victor Fortune, a spokesperson for Sunrise Police. “More information will be provided as it becomes available.”

A Ford Transit van was traveling on a private drive in Stuarts Draft in Augusta County about 8 p.m. Monday when it crossed the tracks and was struck by a northbound train, causing the van to roll over, police said in a news release.

Two men and a woman were ejected from the van and died at the scene, police said. They were identified as Abner Comete, 48, of Boynton Beach; Jacner Comete, 44, of Lauderhill; and Wilda Comete, 38, of Lithia Springs, Georgia. Abner Comete is believed to be the driver of the van, police said.

Another woman, a front-seat passenger, was taken to a hospital with injuries that were considered serious but not life-threatening, police said.

Sgt. C.J. Aikens of the Virginia State Police said the van was leaving a solar project site when a Norfolk Southern train headed north toward Waynesboro from Stuarts Draft struck the driver’s side, The News Virginian reported. A preliminary investigation did not indicate that the van broke down at the time of the crash, Aikens said.