Author: Riley Hansen

The Santa Rosa Sheriff’s Office identified the man as 43-year-old Jerald Otis Williamson of Pensacola. Riles believes he was not in the attic long; when she, her husband and her daughter arrived home around 9 p.m., they did not notice anything suspicious. Around 11 p.m., Riles began hearing loud noises.

“I couldn’t tell they were coming from the attic,” Riles said. At first, she thought her daughter must have dropped something in the bathroom. When the bathroom turned out to be empty, she heard noises near the laundry room. When her daughter came in from her bedroom, Riles knew she was not the one causing the commotion.

“Now we knew for sure it was in the attic,” she said. “Then we heard loud crashing noises in our master bathroom.” The master bathroom had a large crack in the ceiling. The family went out to the garage, where the attic access is located. Noticeably different from when they arrived home just a few hours earlier was the fact that the string hanging down from the attic access was now tucked up under the access door. There was also a large clamp inserted in the garage door.

The police arrived moments after Riles’s husband hung up with them—Riles said officers informed the family they had been looking for someone in the area. Riles and her 20-year-old daughter left the house, and twenty minutes, later they got the call that it was safe to come back.

According to Riles, during those twenty minutes, the SRSO brought in a K9 unit. The dog began barking when it saw the vinyl of the eaves of the house moving, and moments later, Williamson fell through the 20-year-old’s ceiling, and he was apprehended.

It is unclear how Williamson gained access to the house, and Riles can only speculate. Her theory is that Williamson possibly got into one of their unlocked cars and used the garage door opener.

More information will be available as the SRSO releases the arrest report for Williamson. He has been charged with a weapon offense, possession of a weapon, resisting an officer, burglary and property damage – criminal mischief. According to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Williamson is a registered sex offender.

“Santa Rosa County has public transportation, which is a door-to-door service for those that are transportation disadvantaged,” said Shawn Ward, the Community Planning, Zoning & Development Director for the county.

This service assists those who might have trouble getting to medical appointments or going grocery shopping. The program is contracted through the Tri-County Community Council, and anyone interested can fill out an application with them. People who are eligible may not be able to drive for medical reasons, or they simply may not have access to a car for financial reasons.

Para transit is not a rideshare service like Uber or Lyft—the rider must call in advance to schedule their ride, and it’s a first-come-first-serve operation. There is a small fee, usually a few dollars a trip, for the rider, as a limited amount of funding is available. The portion not covered by the fees is handled through the Transportation Disadvantaged Commission.

There are benefits to the para transit service over rideshares. The biggest one is that Santa Rosa County has seen a growth in the population of people who use wheelchairs—rideshares may not have the capability to accommodate those riders, while the para transit service does.

The service may also pick up multiple people if they live along the same route. “It’s really based on the dispatch of the vehicles,” Ward said.

Other public transportation services offered in Santa Rosa County include the American Cancer Society program, Ride On and Park & Ride Lots. The American Cancer Society facilitates rides to and from chemotherapy appointments—a driver will pick up the rider and bring them home.

The West Florida Regional Council handles the Ride On service, which functions as a van or bus pool. This service is for people who might live in the same general area or neighborhood and all work in one central location—Ward cited Navy Federal Credit Union as one such workplace. This service also drops off and picks up, but they can facilitate cab rides for those who might have an emergency and need to leave their place of work early.

The final service offered is Park & Ride Lots, which are a central meeting place for those who are carpooling. They can meet in the lot and leave their car until they return.

While Santa Rosa County offers different levels of public transportation, the question remains as to why there is no fixed-route system similar to Escambia County Area Transit. The county ran a pilot for a similar program, but it concluded in 2012.

“It was lack of ridership,” Ward said. It cost $100,000 to operate two vehicles, and the money brought in by the limited rides was not enough to cover the cost, leaving the transportation largely government funded. The current system still serves those citizens to whom other options are unavailable.

“It’s daily. Literally daily,” Crawford Winstead, the Director of Admissions at Twelve Oaks Recover Center, said. “We see people come in with an opioid issue…on average, every day.” Some days, that number is as high as four people.

Opioids are a group that covers several different substances, such as prescriptions like oxycodone, heroin and fentanyl. Fentanyl, in a medical setting, is used to help with anesthesia—but even just a few grains of fentanyl is strong enough to kill someone. According to Sergeant Rich Aloy of the SRSO, pure fentanyl is 100 times more powerful than morphine.

“Fentanyl is probably the scariest thing out there right now,” Winstead said. “People are buying a lot of what they think are prescription that are really pressed pills.”

“Fentanyl is generally mixed with other narcotics — or they use them in pill presses,” Aloy said. People take pill presses and make drugs to sell in their garages — oftentimes, dangerous drugs like fentanyl are mixed with prescriptions like Xanax. This is where the problem really lies.” There is no quality control with homemade pills. Where a pharmacist will measure out grams of a medication, those doing it in their homes or garages are doing it by hand. “You never know the level of fentanyl you’re going to get,” he said.

“People that are using opioids seem to be much more desperate,” Winstead said of the psychology behind the drugs. Because such a small amount of fentanyl goes such a long way, it can be a cheaper drug for addicts. “I think that the draw is both financially and from a strength perspective,” he continued.
“We’re actually seeing a lot more people … that strictly use fentanyl,” Winstead said. From a medical standpoint, anyone who is using fentanyl intentionally has likely had an overdose at some point.

Aloy noted that opioid trafficking in Santa Rosa County is common, though the official number is not as high as it could be due to the trade being underground. However, people lacing different drugs with fentanyl is an issue. It’s in pill presses, but it can also be turned into a liquid and used to dip marijuana into — a drug that is legal in some states then becomes deadly.

“If it’s not prescribed to you, don’t take it — because of the danger,” Aloy stressed.

Winstead stressed that there are steps anyone can take to avoid becoming addicted to prescription drugs or opioids. “The smart practice would be to use as prescribed, or less. Do not ask for it if you don’t feel like you need it. Follow your provider’s instruction,” Winstead said. “Everyone has this concept that a pill is going to solve every problem,” he continued. If you have a family history of addiction, avoid pain killers or opioids as much as possible. He also recommended setting up an accountability partner if you have to take a drug like oxycodone.”

Winstead said Twelve Oaks is trying to treat two sides of the same issue. “Almost every client that comes in here suffers from some sort of mental health issue,” he said. Trauma and family histories of substance abuse drive addiction, but treating both sides leads a higher likelihood of success.

Instead of harvesting wild oysters, Ryan McAndrew of Emerald Tides farms his own. “You basically, instead of harvesting the wild oysters, you buy the seed oysters from a seed hatchery,” he said. McAndrew and Smith each buy as many seeds as they can, as not all of the oysters will survive.

These two companies started just a couple of years apart—Emerald Tides began working in 2018, and Grayson Bay got started in 2020. The draw for both men is largely environmental.

“The wild stocks can’t keep up with demand,” McAndrew said. Oyster farms fill in the gap and are a more conscious choice, as farms don’t require raking the floor of the bay, as well as taking away from a wild population. Instead, the farms are floating cages with bags filled with those tiny oysters that will grow to be up to three inches in diameter.

“It’s a super sustainable crop,” Smith said. He is a biologist by trade, and his focus is on water quality and aquatic diversity. Oysters are filter feeders, and an adult can filter 50 gallons of water per day, making them beneficial to the other sea life living in Escambia and East Bays.

Smith combined this passion with another—his family. His company is named after his two sons, and his goal is for his kids to have a childhood of growing up on the water, spending time with family and seeing how hard work is done.

Oyster farms are hard work. While “wild” populations of oysters are actually laid down by humans, then collected about three years later, McAndrew and Smith are constantly out in the water.

Grayson Bay oysters are sorted and tumbled, which helps correct the shape and keep barnacles off. Money goes into labor and the cages that keep the oysters for a year or two.

“The price does reflect that added complication,” McAndrew noted. Both companies sell to restaurants, one of which the Grand Marlin on Pensacola Beach.
“By no means is aquaculture or oyster farming going to take the lead on oyster consumption,” Smith said.

He sells his oysters individually, and he said they are specifically curated for a raw bar—not to be battered or fried, which is just one reason he would love to see the wild population come back.

“It’s unsustainable,” McAndrew said of harvesting wild oysters. Apalachicola oysters used to be the standard, but they were fished to the point that now there is a five-year ban on oyster harvesting in the area. A pattern seems to have developed—similar events happened in New York, then Chesapeake.

Approval to farm in East Bay came from the state, which was a year long process for Emerald Tides.

McAndrew chose the area because of the depth, flow and water quality—not to mention, the north shore of Gulf Breeze helps protect the farms from storms. “We are really susceptible to hurricanes,” McAndrew said.

Both companies protect their crops from dangers, such as storms, barnacles and crabs. Crabs and other animals, like drill snails, eat oysters, causing crop to be lost. And both McAndrew and Smith want to keep producing as many oysters as they can.