Sasse, a former Republican U.S. Senator from Nebraska, gave several one-time Senate staff members and other GOP officials lucrative remote positions at UF, according to records obtained by the Independent Florida Alligator.

Among the Senate staffers who joined him at UF are his former chief of staff, Raymond Sass; his former communications director, James Wegmann; his former press secretary, Taylor Silva; and three other former staffers. Both Sass and Wegmann worked remotely from the Washington D.C. area.

Sass’ salary, at $396,000, was more than double his Senate salary. Wegmann’s new position at UF earned him $432,000, while his predecessor in the position had made $270,000.

The hirings contributed to a $4.3 million increase in presidential salary expenses, part of a tripling of his office’s spending compared to what his predecessor, Kent Fuchs, spent during his last year in office, the Alligator reported. Sasse’s office employed more than 30 staff members, while Fuchs had fewer than 10.

Sasse also hired former Tennessee Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn, who worked remotely from Nashville, in a newly-created position that paid a starting salary of $367,500 and U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham’s former scheduler, Alice James Burns, who also worked remotely and was paid $205,000.

A report obtained by the Alligator says Sasse spent over $20,000 flying his employees to UF between April 29 and July 29. The only hire who lives in Florida received a $15,000 stipend to relocate to Gainesville.

UF hasn’t responded to requests from the Alligator for a complete log of Sasse’s travel expenses. His travel expenses rose to $633,000 over his first full fiscal year, more than Fuchs spent on travel in eight years.

He also spent $7.2 million on consulting contracts, nearly two-thirds of which went to consulting giant McKinsey and Company, where he used to work as an advisor on an hourly contract. This amounts to more than 40 times what Fuchs spent on consulting in eight years.

Sasse abruptly resigned at the end of July, citing his wife’s failing health. The Alligator says the university did not respond to questions about what would happen to the hires now that Sasse is gone. Fuchs has returned as interim president until the UF Board of Trustees can hire a permanent replacement for Sasse.

Sasse’s hiring by the Board in 2022 resulted in the UF Faculty Senate passing a no confidence resolution in Sasse’s presidential search process due to transparency issues. Legislation passed by Florida’s GOP-controlled legislature earlier in 2022 made records relating to public university presidential searches exempt from Florida’s open public meetings and public records requirements.

His appointment by the board of trustees also generated controversy among parts of the student body, especially the LGBTQ+ community, for political positions Sasse had taken while in the Senate.

The alligator attack happened shortly before 2 a.m. in Lake Monroe in Seminole County, FWC spokesperson Lauren Claerbout said by email Tuesday afternoon. His arm was later amputated from the elbow down.

Claerbout did not identify the man but said he’d been experiencing homelessness.

Lake Monroe is one of the lakes that make up the St. Johns River system. The city of Sanford is situated along the southern shore while DeBary and Deltona are located along the northern shore.

No other details have been released but the agency is investigating.

The FWC recommends the following precautionary measures near alligators, including in or near water, to reduce chances of conflicts with them:

• Keep a safe distance if you see one. If someone is concerned about an alligator, call FWC’s toll-free Nuisance Alligator Hotline at 866-FWC-GATOR (866-392-4286) and it will dispatch a contracted nuisance alligator trapper to resolve the situation.
• Keep pets on a leash and away from the water’s edge. Pets often resemble alligators’ natural prey.
• Swim only in designated swimming areas during daylight hours and without your pet. Alligators are most active between dusk and dawn.
• Never feed an alligator, it’s illegal and dangerous. When fed, alligators can lose their natural wariness and instead learn to associate people with the availability of food. This can lead to an alligator becoming a nuisance and needing to be removed from the wild.

Just another routine drug bust? Maybe not.

A ruling by a state appeals court in a little-noticed, nearly two-year court battle over a drug arrest in Central Florida may have broad implications for Second Amendment rights in a state with so many owners of firearms that it’s sometimes called the “Gunshine State.”

A panel of three judges in Florida’s Fifth District Court of Appeals last week ordered a new sentencing for a Citrus County man convicted for selling marijuana. Once a new judge is assigned and a hearing date set, prosecutors and the defendant’s attorney will clash again over how long the defendant should be incarcerated.

With its decision, the court has ruled that legal gun ownership can’t be used to impute unlawful intentions, a powerful assertion of gun rights in Florida.

“This appeal presents the question whether a trial court may rely on a defendant’s lawful firearm possession in sentencing him. We conclude that it may not,” the ruling stated. “Courts deprive defendants of due process when they rely on uncharged and unproven conduct during sentencing, and this principle holds especially true where the uncharged conduct is the lawful exercise of a constitutional right.”

How did a drug case that didn’t involve guns lead to the Second Amendment? All it took was two photos and a few contradictory statements from a judge.

Mykel Anthony Nelson of Crystal River, who was 27 at the time, was arrested in December 2020 on drug-related charges after the Citrus County Sheriff’s Office seized 28.9 pounds of marijuana from his residence in Hernando during a search with a warrant, according to court records.

A confidential informant had previously twice purchased marijuana from Nelson before arranging a third buy. The informant never arrived to collect. Police showed up, instead.

Nelson was charged with four felonies, including trafficking in cannabis, plus a misdemeanor. He ultimately pleaded no contest. None of the charges was related to guns.

During Nelson’s sentencing in February 2022, prosecutors sought a sentence of 87 months on two of the charges from Circuit Judge Richard Howard. The sentences for the other charges were to be served concurrently. Nelson apologized to his mother and the judge and said he agreed to sell the marijuana to raise money to invest in real estate and pay for renovations of a home.

“I did it out of impatience and greed,” he said. “I’m a bit of an opportunist and sometimes it works in my advantage and sometimes it bites me in the, you know, rear.”

According to the appeals ruling, prosecutors at the hearing displayed two photos of firearms legally owned by Nelson that were found in Nelson’s residence during his arrest as part of their argument. The guns included a small Ruger pistol and an assault-style rifle.

Prosecutors mentioned that there had been a potential murder months prior possibly linked to the sale of marijuana, although they did not state Nelson was involved in the killing.

After sentencing Nelson, Howard mentioned the photos of the guns in a seemingly paradoxical statement.

“And what hurts you the most Mr. Nelson, was … the photographs of the guns,” Howard said. “They did not charge with those. I did not take that into account; but why you did this, I do not know.”

Nelson appealed the case the following month.

On Friday, a panel of three appellate judges in Daytona Beach — Jordan Pratt, Eric Eisnaugle and John Harris — ruled that Nelson’s rights to due process had been violated during his sentencing when the trial judge had taken Nelson’s ownership of firearms into consideration, especially considering the fact that Nelson had not been charged with any firearms-related offenses and had been exercising his protected Second Amendment rights as a lawful gun owner.

“If due process prohibits a trial court from relying on ‘uncharged and unproven crimes’ when pronouncing a sentence … it prohibits a trial court from relying on the lawful exercise of a constitutional right,” the appeals judges wrote.

The panel found that prosecutors had been unable to prove that Howard had not partially relied on Nelson’s gun ownership in pronouncing his sentence given the judge’s remarks.

The panel threw out Nelson’s sentence and directed the chief judge to reassign the case to a different judge for a new sentencing. The new judge has not yet been assigned.

When Nelson is resentenced, the time he has already served in prison will be deducted from the new sentence. He was placed in jail immediately following his sentencing in February 2022, and is currently incarcerated at Putnam Correctional Institution in Palatka, where he was transferred in April 2022, the day after his 29th birthday.

Nelson’s attorney, Victoria Hatfield, said Nelson was just learning about the ruling in his case. She declined to make Nelson available for an interview.

“I have a great deal of respect and admiration for Judge Howard and the prosecutors, but no one in the practice of law is perfect,” Hatfield said in an interview. “We appreciate the appellate court giving this matter a second look. My client and his family look forward to a resentencing in his case.”

Legal experts said the case was unusual.

“I can understand why police and prosecutors are not thrilled with armed drug dealers, so I can see why they wanted a harsher sentence because of the guns,” said John J. Donohue III, a professor at Stanford Law School who researches firearms and crime.

He said the ruling was indicative of trends sweeping the country and could be reflected in federal legal battles related to the Second Amendment.

“This case shows the thinking that is expanding across the nation that embraces a very strong pro-gun agenda and it gives a sense of the likely direction the current Supreme Court is headed,” Donohue said.

Andrew Willinger, the executive director of Duke University School of Law’s Center for Firearms Law, said the case was interesting, but he believes it wasn’t likely to affect gun rights in a significant way. He said cases like this may become more common.

“As more guns are purchased and carried in public places — the Supreme Court’s recent Second Amendment jurisprudence makes this likely — courts may increasingly confront the situation presented in Nelson where a defendant possesses guns lawfully unrelated to the actual offense. That said, my sense is that it’s generally unusual for courts to consider conduct during sentencing that isn’t somehow connected to the offense charged.”

This story was produced by Fresh Take Florida, a news service of the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications. The reporter can be reached at silas.morgan@ufl.edu. You can donate to support our students here.

“I think that’s like a scare tactic,” said Instagram model and influencer Kelly Kay, who jumped from the stands to run across the Hard Rock Stadium field in Miami Gardens during the Super Bowl in 2020, referring to the new law increasing fines on offenders and allowing authorities to seize their assets. It took effect Sunday.

“To tell people, ‘Not only are you going to get in trouble for this and go to jail, they’ll get a charge, we’re going to take your money,’” Kay of Knoxville, Tennessee, said in an interview. “But if it was me and that law was in effect when I ran on the field, I would still do it because of the long-term effect.”

Kay, then 27, was tackled by security quickly near the end zone. She was arrested and hit with a trespassing charge that eventually was dropped. Since then, she has soared to 1 million Instagram followers. (She told The New York Times she decided not to do it nude because she knew children would be watching.)

The anti-streaking measure, “Interference With Sporting or Entertainment Events,” sponsored by Rep. Taylor Yarkosky, R-Montverde, received nearly unanimous support in both legislative chambers earlier this year, passing 109-3 in the House and 39-0 in the Senate. Gov. Ron DeSantis signed it into law in June.

Yarkosky, elected to the House last year, said he primarily introduced the bill to stop streaking, in which people run across the field fully or partially nude. Kay was walked off the field by security while exposing pink thong underwear under a black cover up.

“I have four daughters and a son,” Yarkosky said. “You save up money and take them out to a baseball game or a football game, and the last thing you want to see is somebody running around indecently for corrupt financial gain.”

He acknowledged the new law may not prevent influencers like Kay from seeking fame, but hopes it will give them pause.

“You’re going to have the social media influencer, but you know, it could really hurt their career,” Yarkosky said. “There’s a lot of things that could happen, that they may think twice about doing that.”

The law applies to all who storm onto fields or arena floors during sporting events whether fully clothed or not, and includes fans rushing the stage during concerts and artistic or theatrical events.

Yarkosky said that, in many cases, those individuals running across fields or onto stages are doing so at the behest of others – such as a website owner – who seek publicity for themselves, and that they are paid to do so.

Any individual soliciting the person to carry out the action in exchange for something of value can be charged with a third-degree felony, which is punishable by up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine.

The new law also allows authorities to seize the assets of any person who rushes or streaks at entertainment venues and who was paid. They can face charges of a first-degree misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in jail or a fine up to $2,500.

Individuals who rush and streak fields or other entertainment venues, even without being paid, will still be charged with a misdemeanor.

Previously, rushing or streaking at entertainment events was punishable with the same jail time but the maximum fine was $1,000.

Florida is no stranger to streaking or rushing the field.

In the Super Bowl in 2021, held at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Yuri Andrade of Boca Raton, then 31, blazed across the field during the fourth quarter in a pink leotard that displayed his buttocks.

Andrade’s actions were part of a publicity stunt to promote his friend’s adult website, the name of which was printed on the leotard. In interviews later, he said it was “the greatest moment of my life.”

Andrade was arrested and charged with trespassing. He eventually pleaded no contest and had to write a letter of apology to the NFL, perform 100 hours of community service and serve one year’s probation, according to court records. His attorney at the time, Luis Cartaya, said his client also had to pay a $500 fine. Andrade did not respond to a text message asking to discuss his case.

According to court records, the owner of the adult website, Vitaly Zdorovetskiy, paid another man, Douglas Schaffer, $5,000 to storm the field and distract security and allow Andrade an opening to get further on the field. Schaffer was arrested and pleaded no contest to the same charges as Andrade and got the same sentence in court.

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This story was produced by Fresh Take Florida, a news service of the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications. The reporter can be reached at silas.morgan@ufl.edu. You can donate to support our students here.

Jack Sweeney is a 20-year-old rising junior at the University of Central Florida majoring in information technology. The Clermont native gained notoriety online for his Twitter account where he tracked Elon Musk’s private jet across the globe.

Sweeney’s father worked in aviation, so he began tracking his father’s flights through publicly available information. A fan of Elon Musk, he decided to begin tracking the billionaire’s flights as well.

While he initially only sought Musk’s flight patterns for his personal curiosity, a friend on the online social platform Discord gave him the idea to share the data with others.

“They said that you should post on Twitter, because there’s so many Elon Musk fans on Twitter, they’d be interested in it,” Sweeney said in an interview Wednesday.

Sweeney’s account ultimately gained around 500,000 followers, captivating many online. Sweeney didn’t expect it to become an online phenomenon.

“It was cool when it was just, like, talked about when he would fly somewhere and people were like, referencing it,” Sweeney said. “But I never expected it to be more than that, like, you know, where it would be like hundreds of thousands of followers. It just kept on event after event.”

It ultimately caught the attention of Musk, who reached out to Sweeney over Twitter direct messages in December 2021 to offer him $5,000 to stop posting his flight patterns.

“It was like 1 a.m. and I was in my college dorm, and then I saw that he messaged me and I couldn’t believe it,” Sweeney said. “You know, I was going nuts pretty much. It was just unbelievable to see that.”

Sweeney made a counteroffer: He would stop for $50,000 or a Tesla. Musk rejected the offer.

“We kept talking. He was wondering how it works. You know, could I take it down? And then he asked if I made any money and I was like, you know, I don’t really feel like taking it down for nothing because I spent time on it. And then he offered me $5,000. I thought that wasn’t enough and I counter offered, but he didn’t accept any of that.”

In October 2022, Musk bought Twitter. In December, Twitter permanently banned Sweeney’s account where he tracked Musk’s jet. Sweeney subsequently made a new account that tracked Musk’s flights 24 hours after they occurred to get around Twitter’s new rules on the subject.

Sweeney says that while he is still a fan of Musk, he is disappointed in him for apparently going back on his promise to support free speech on Twitter by banning his account.

“He could do whatever he wants with Twitter,” Sweeney said. “He can go back on his word, but like, it just doesn’t make him look that good in the town square, free speech idea, I would say.”

Sweeny also disapproves of Musk’s handling of Twitter in general.

“Everything he does on Twitter, it seems like, really sporadic and, like, wild,” Sweeney said. “I just think that he could do everything that he does with Twitter a lot better.”

Sweeny has started an account on Mark Zuckerberg’s newly launched Twitter competitor Threads, which Twitter has threatened to file a lawsuit against claiming that Facebook parent company Meta used trade secrets from former Twitter employees to create the site.

Threads acquired 100 million users in its first five days, according to Forbes.

Sweeney’s new Threads account, “elonmusksjet”, already had 111,000 followers as of Wednesday afternoon. His second Twitter account, made after his original account’s ban, had only reached about 25,000 followers.

“There’s a lot of great comments people are leaving,” Sweeney said. “They’re like, ‘Oh, I’m already enjoying threads so much better.’”

Sweeney says he believes his second Twitter account was shadowbanned, which refers to when a social media site hides or restricts a user’s content without informing them.

“I’m sure, like, I’m somehow limited on Twitter,” Sweeney said. “Like I tell someone that I had a new Twitter account. They search for me and they couldn’t find me. My personal.”

Sweeney says he’ll continue tracking Musk’s jet and will be developing his personal website.

“I’m still working on stuff in the background and make my own websites,” Sweeney said. “I could just have way more possibility if I make some interactive on my own website. Track more people because then you don’t have to set up a social media account. Just so many more possibilities for giving people features or generating ad revenue, stuff like that. Social media is good for like their reach, but not for, you know, developing more features.”

Sweeney also has accounts where he tracks the flights of Donald Trump, Jeff Bezos, Taylor Swift, Kim Kardashian and Gov. Ron DeSantis.

“[He worried] about his friends, about immigration, about social issues,” she said. “… When Joaquin was 12 years old, he was able to write a project about [firearm purchase] background checks, when he just was 12 years old. He was posting on Twitter, he was tweeting about all that happened in Sandy Hook.”

In February 2018, Joaquin was one of the 17 people killed in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland. His parents, Patricia and her husband Manuel Oliver, have spent the years since the shooting raising awareness for gun violence prevention in honor of their son, following in his footsteps as an activist.

On Monday, they joined the families of other mass shooting victims and mass shooting survivors for a gun violence prevention rally at the Pulse Memorial.

The rally was part of Guac’s Magical Tour-Guacathon 2023, a cross-country road trip in a school bus to 25 cities affected by gun violence, including Columbine, Colo.; Newtown, Conn., the site of the Sandy Hook shooting; Las Vegas; El Paso and Uvalde, Texas. The tour is named in honor of the nickname given to Joaquin by his friends.

“He was very determined, very demanding, and that’s why today Manuel and I just do our best to represent him in his best possible way,” Patricia Oliver said of her son. “Because we’re sure that if he were here with us, he would be doing what we’re doing today. So instead of that we are the ones who are in charge of that.”

Guacathon began at the memorial garden at Marjory Stoneman Douglass High School in Parkland earlier on Monday. The Olivers then traveled to Orlando to visit the Pulse Memorial, located at the site of the Pulse nightclub where 49 people lost their lives in a mass shooting in 2016.

The tour is supposed to end on Aug. 20 in Charleston, South Carolina, two weeks after Joaquin’s 23rd birthday on Aug. 4. The tour was originally planned to make 23 stops in honor of Joaquin’s birthday before two more stops were added.

Patricia Oliver says the tour is about bringing hope, awareness and unity to those affected by gun violence, especially in light of Florida’s new law allowing permitless concealed carry, which went into effect Saturday.

“Since July 1, we’re gonna be in more trouble, and that’s why we decided to call it all together against gun violence,” she said. “So how can we be able to bring some kind of hope or some kind of, you know, determination to be able to stay united and bring more people into the cause to fight against this craziness that we’re doing every day.”

Democratic Congressman Maxwell Frost, who represents Florida’s 10th Congressional District, spoke at the event, singling out the new law.

“People will call it ‘constitutional carry’, it’s actually permitless carry, which essentially means any gun, any place, any person,” Frost said. “Most gun owners, most Republicans, most Democrats, most humans who live in the United States are against dangerous laws like this, passed by a governor who’s more interested in running for president than running the state of Florida. People will die because of this legislation.”

Brandon Wolf, a survivor of the Pulse shooting, spoke about the rally’s ‘ironic” timing just before July 4, when the nation celebrates the core American value of freedom.

“There are a lot of people in this country who have had freedom stolen from them because of our obsession with easy access to weapons of war,” Wolf said. “There’s no freedom for the 18-year-old girl who died in a bathroom in that building [Pulse]… There’s no freedom for my best friends Drew and Juan who took 19 rounds from a SIG Sauer MCX [rifle] and never made it home to say goodbye to their parents.”

Mayra Alvear, mother of Pulse victim Amanda Alvear, said she sympathized with the Olivers and understands what they do.

“You keep fighting for change,” Alvear said. “It is because of the love we have for our children, because their life means so much to us. As parents, we do everything for our children, and we don’t stop because they were taken from us. … We don’t want this nightmare to happen to other families. We know how these tragedies affect our lives. We live it daily. We think of our children from the time we wake up until they go to bed, everyday.”

The push to reform gun laws, she said, “is not about the 2nd Amendment.”

“This is about everyone’s right to live and go to work, to dance, to school, to church, to a park and theater, going shopping, walking down their neighborhood freely without worries of being mowed down by high-capacity rifles,” Alvear said.

Some GOP lawmakers in Florida also recently attempted to lower the age at which a person can buy certain types of firearms, such as rifles, from 21 to 18. The age was previously raised to 21 under then-Gov. Rick Scott in the aftermath of the Parkland shooting.

“That was a really, was very disrespectful, let’s put it that way, to us as families of kids that we lost in the Parkland shooting,” Patricia Oliver said.

The next stop on the tour is Atlanta on Wednesday.

Marc and Sharon Hagle, the millionaire adventurers who previously were the first married couple to go on a commercial space flight in 2022, sued Rush for fraud in February after multiple planned expeditions to the wreckage of the Titanic were delayed and they said they were denied a refund.

“Like most around the world, we have watched the coverage of the OceanGate Titan capsule with great concern and enormous amount of sadness and compassion for the families of those who lost their lives,” the statement said. “We honor their zest for life, as well as their commitment to the exploration of our oceans.”

The couple have informed their attorneys to withdraw all legal actions against Rush in light of his death, according to the statement. The spokesperson, Jessica Garcia, said the couple were not giving interviews on the matter.

“Money is a driving force in our economy, but honor, respect and dignity are more important to the human soul,” the statement continued. “We wish the entire OceanGate family and the families of those aboard the Titan the very best as they grieve the loss of their loved ones.”

The Hagles in 2016 signed a contract to go on OceanGate’s first planned voyage to the Titanic, set for 2018. The expedition was repeatedly delayed, first to 2019, then 2020 and then 2021.

When the Hagles considered requesting a refund in 2017, Rush personally visited them at their Winter Park residence and convinced them to stay on for the next planned expedition, according to the suit.

Rush allegedly promised the couple that they would receive a refund if the expedition was further delayed. The Hagles subsequently signed new contracts, paying their expedition’s remaining balance to OceanGate for a total $210,258.

After repeated further delays, the Hagles asked for a refund. OceanGate eventually responded to the request by allegedly demanding the couple participate in the expedition scheduled for July 2021, stating they would not be entitled to a refund if they did not participate.

The lawsuit alleges Rush misled the Hagles during the September 2017 meeting to prevent them from withdrawing from the expedition and persuade them to sign the second set of contracts, in order to accelerate the couple’s payment of the remaining balance of the expedition’s cost.

The lawsuit also alleged Rush violated Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Practices Act.

The Titan submersible carrying Rush, who was reportedly piloting the craft, and four passengers went missing the morning of June 18. On Thursday, the U.S. Coast Guard announced that the Titan had imploded near the Titanic shipwreck, killing all five people on board.

Richard Stockton Rush, the founder and CEO of OceanGate Expeditions, the company behind the highly expensive manned submersible expeditions to the Titanic, as well as one of the five people aboard the missing sub, is the sole named defendant in the suit filed in Orange County circuit court by Marc and Sharon Hagle, the millionaire adventurers who have previously gone to space.

According to the lawsuit, the couple paid OceanGate a total of $210,258 to be a part of the company’s first manned expedition to the wreckage of the Titanic, which was initially supposed to take place in June 2018 aboard the Cyclops 2 submersible, later renamed Titan.

The Hagles each signed initial contracts and paid a total deposit of $20,000 in November 2016, with the remaining money scheduled to be paid at a later date stipulated in the contract. In mid-2017, the Hagles began to suspect that the sub wouldn’t be ready for the June 2018 dive and considered requesting a refund on the $20,000 deposit.

According to the suit, Rush visited the Hagles at their Winter Park home in September 2017, where he convinced the couple to remain involved in the expedition, assuring them the sub would be complete on time and that they could request a refund if the expedition was delayed.

He also informed the couple that all client deposits were in an escrow account separate from his own personal account or OceanGate’s, the Hagles allege.

The Hagles claim they were given new contracts in January 2018, which required them to immediately pay the remaining $190,258 instead of following the payment schedule in the original contracts. The couple signed the contracts and paid the remaining funds the following February, their suit says

But OceanGate, the Hagles say, canceled the June 2018 voyage two months later, citing a need for more tests. The expedition was rescheduled for July 2019.

In June 2019, the July expedition was canceled as well, with OceanGate claiming that its contracted support vessel refused to participate, the lawsuit says. The company later cited equipment failure as another reason for the cancellation. The voyage was postponed until an unspecified time in 2020.

The Hagles subsequently spoke with Rush and requested a full refund that same month, to which OceanGate’s Expedition Manager informed the couple that the company was working on a full refund plan, the suit claims The manager allegedly said details on the plan would be made clear in the coming weeks.

OceanGate subsequently announced that the expedition would take place in July 2020. Then, in October 2019, OceanGate announced the cancellation of the 2020 expedition.

OceanGate eventually responded to the Hagles request for a refund by allegedly demanding the couple participate in an expedition scheduled for July 2021, stating they would not be entitled to a refund if they did not participate.

The lawsuit alleges Rush misled the Hagles during the September 2017 meeting to prevent them from withdrawing from the expedition and persuade them to sign the second set of contracts, in order to accelerate the couple’s payment of the remaining balance of the expedition’s cost.

The lawsuit also alleges Rush violated Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Practices Act.

The Titan submersible carrying Rush, who was reportedly piloting the craft, and four passengers went missing Sunday morning. Authorities estimate they have enough oxygen to last them until Thursday morning.

The Hagles became the first married couple on a commercial space flight during a Blue Origin flight in March 2022. Marc Hagle is president and CEO of Winter Park-based commercial property company Tricor International Corp. and Sharon Hagle is founder of local nonprofit SpaceKids Global.