Featured Image Credit: HCSO/TikTok/@terrenceconcannon
Topics: TikTok, US News, Viral, Crime, Hurricane Milton
Anish Vij
Topics: TikTok, US News, Viral, Crime, Hurricane Milton
A man from Florida - known as 'Lieutenant Dan' on his TikTok page - has been arrested.
One-legged sailor Joseph Malinowski went viral after surviving Hurricane Milton out on his boat.
His username is based on the war veteran character from Forest Gump.
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Lieutenant Dan (played by Gary Sinise) loses both of his legs and spends the remainder of his days on a fishing boat.
This comes after the 54-year-old was arrested by Tampa police officers on Friday (18 October) for refusing to move his boat from Bayshore Linear Park over a health hazard, reports NBC.
Malinowski reportedly did not have proper record of waster disposal on his boat or an accessible marine sanitation device.
On the arrest notice, his occupation was listed as a ‘Tik Tok Star’, according to reports.
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Verliz Williams, a public information officer with the Tampa Police Department, said: "Malinowski informed officers that he did not have an accessible marine sanitation device aboard his unregistered vessel and did not have a record of proper disposal of waste, creating a public health hazard.
"He was instructed to leave the park; however, he was found to be still there this morning, even after numerous warnings."
Over on TikTok, the content creator revealed that he lost his leg in a car crash when he was 16.
Explaining why he ignored the evacuation warnings ahead of the category five storm, Hurricane Milton, he said: “The safest place to be is on a boat in a flood. We learned that with Noah.
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“Everyone that stayed on land drowned. Noah and the animals lived. I'm not worried.
“My life, this is nothing compared to what I've been through. This doesn't scare me.
“This is not even a minor inconvenience because all that's going to happen is everyone is going to get wet, but I'm going to be fine because I'm in a boat that floats."
Now, according to a report by The Orlando Sentinel, this isn't the first time Malinowski has been in trouble with the law.
He reportedly received a one-year prison sentence for 'punching a police officer in the nose' and in a case last year, he was accused of setting a park bench on fire and then splashing gasoline on a woman.
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“She feared for her life due to the potential for the gasoline to ignite due to her holding an ignited cigarette,” the deputy wrote in his arrest report.
The case was dropped a month later.