UPDATE May 21, 2026 , Sarasota News leader writes, The Sarasota Police Department is investigating two shootings that occurred 10 blocks apart on consecutive days this week in the Newtown community of north Sarasota, it announced in separate news releases. The first incident was reported about 5:30 a.m. on Tuesday, May 19, in the 1700 block of 23rd Street in Sarasota, the agency said. The second incident was reported just after 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday, May 20, in the 1800 block of 33rd Street, that news release said. May 29, 2026, Body Found Newtown .  Human remains found at Newtown work site.  The discovery of skeletal remains in northern Sarasota County just outside the Sarasota city limit prompted a multiple-agency response to a wooded area near Newtown . On the morning of Friday, May 29, 2026 construction workers discovered the partial human remains (bones) in a wooded lot off Leonard Reid Avenue just east of U.S. 301. It appears the vacant homeless camp where the ...

UPDATED Jan 7th, 2023: Most historians in the Sarasota area got the timeline and information about the murder of former mayor Harry Higel all wrong and went ahead and published the wrong day Jan 6th and the wrong location where he was actually found in articles and even in books. The day he was murdered there was a special edition published by the Tampa Daily Times with the date, Friday Jan 7th 1921, and the time he was found, 8:30 am, and the location where he was found at the turn in the road from Siesta Dr onto Higel Ave. Anybody who lives in the Sarasota area knows this curve with the big yellow signs telling you to slow down to 20 mph, well that is where Harry Higel was murdered. His house at the far north end of Higel Ave was only a couple hundred yards form the murder scene, I know this for a fact as I walked it! According to a Tampa Times news article of Jan 11, 1921, a chart with information on the murder of Harry Higel was published on Page 1. The Tampa Times reported that...