'Help me, Jesus': Florida man hits alligator on I-4, flips over bike, slides across freeway
'Help me, Jesus': Florida man hits alligator on I-4, flips over bike, slides across freeway. The KRAK 11 News hour: The World Desk, Criminal Intent, Animals, A Quick Look At Sports. Real stories from named sources, read by Chip Marlowe and Deb Sarkissian.
Aired 2026-08-25 20:52 UTC · 5 segments · 8 min · complete transcript below
Rundown
KRAK 11 NEWS
Good afternoon. This is KRAK 11 News at four o'clock, I'm Chip Marlowe.
And I'm Deb Sarkissian. This hour on KRAK 11 News: The World Desk, where a police pursuit ends with one man dead and two women injured. In Criminal Intent, a couple in Beverly Hills fights the village over whether chickens count as pets.
Animals brings you the heron rescue that has now led our countdown for twenty-five consecutive hours. And A Quick Look at Sports covers the Department of Homeland Security's admission that the noncitizen voter numbers it gave out last week were inflated.
That is not sports.
It is not. Still ahead this afternoon on The World Desk: one woman remains in critical condition after that pursuit, and we will tell you what investigators know about how it started. Deb?
The World Desk is next.
THE WORLD DESK
This is KRAK 11 News. I'm Chip Marlowe.
And I'm Deb Sarkissian. Good afternoon.
Four o'clock on a Wednesday afternoon in Wexler County. Let's go around the world.
We begin with the death of Dolly Parton. The iconic country singer died at the age of eighty. Parton's team confirmed the news on social media.
No cause of death has been announced. She recorded more than fifty albums and won nine Grammy awards over a career that spanned six decades.
She wrote I Will Always Love You.
She did. Twice a number one. And she founded Dollywood in Tennessee, which employs more than four thousand people.
To Canada now. The government there has announced what it is calling dollar-for-dollar retaliatory tariffs on American goods. Tariffs as high as fifty percent.
The levies will apply to steel, aluminum, furniture, fresh tuna, and makeup. This is the latest escalation in an ongoing trade war between the United States and Canada.
That is a lot of tuna.
Fresh tuna is a significant export from the northeastern states to Ontario and Quebec. The tariff applies to fresh fish specifically, not canned.
We are watching that.
An update now on the Strait of Hormuz. President Trump says all mines have now been cleared from the waterway.
We told you earlier this week that Iran had closed the vital waterway at the start of the conflict, causing wild fluctuations in oil prices worldwide. About a fifth of the world's oil passes through that strait.
That is north of Yemen.
It separates Iran from Oman. Yemen is across the Gulf of Aden to the south.
Right. The Yemen side.
The Oman side. The president says the waterway is now open and safe for commercial traffic.
And researchers say at least one in four former NFL players who died between twenty sixteen and twenty twenty-one had chronic traumatic encephalopathy. That is a degenerative brain disease.
The new study says the true figure could be much higher than one in four. C-T-E is linked to repeated head trauma and can only be diagnosed after death. The study appears in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
A quarter of all players in that time period.
At least a quarter. The researchers say it could be significantly higher because not all families donated brain tissue for study.
We have been at this desk a long time.
Ten years in March.
And you still correct my geography every single afternoon.
I consider it collaborative.
If you're watching us on YouTube, and you like what we do here, a subscription genuinely helps. Costs you nothing. Means a great deal to a station this size.
And we read the comments. Chip answers them at four in the morning.
The news does not sleep.
Still ahead this afternoon on KRAK 11 News, Criminal Intent. A break-in at a veterinary clinic in Bradenton. The thieves left the cash register alone.
They took something else.
They did. Criminal Intent in a few minutes.
This is KRAK 11 News.
CRIMINAL INTENT
Good afternoon. I am Chip Marlowe.
And I am Deb Sarkissian. This afternoon we have what we are calling a Florida Man Tribute to the animal kingdom.
Four stories. Four animals. All of them from Florida. All of them from last year.
And all of them genuinely happened.
Back in June of last year, two motorcyclists on Interstate Four in Volusia County struck a six-foot alligator. Both riders were thrown from their bikes and slid across the freeway.
Both were hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries. Both have since recovered. One of them told Fox Thirty-Five News that his exact words at the time of impact were, quote, Help me, Jesus.
Also in June of last year, an Ohio police department issued a warning to drivers: leave your car windows up. Cicadas had invaded one vehicle and caused a crash that left the car on its side.
The driver was not seriously injured. The condition of the cicadas was not reported.
Back in May of last year, a paddleboarder near Honeymoon Island had what authorities described as a rare and thrilling encounter with a giant manta ray. The ray dove directly beneath the board.
The paddleboarder stayed upright. His exact words, also quoted, were Unbelievable.
No charges were filed in any of these cases.
None.
And back in August of 2024, a couple in Beverly Hills fought a village ordinance over whether or not their chickens qualified as pets.
They scheduled a meeting with the Village of Beverly Hills Zoning Board of Appeals to clarify the specifics of the pet ownership ordinance. Specifically, whether or not it included chickens.
That is four stories. Four animals. Four Floridas. KRAK Eleven has now aired two hundred and thirty-one Florida Man Tributes in forty-four weeks.
You keep track.
Gordo keeps track.
Still ahead this afternoon: Animals. Fisherman Found This Heron Fighting For Its Life remains at number one for the twenty-fifth consecutive hour.
We are back in ninety seconds.
ANIMALS
Time now for the Good News Desk.
We rank the animal videos that gained the most views in the last four days. This is the KRAK 11 countdown.
Three videos today. We count them down.
Number three. One hundred and twenty pounds of dog, hiding from ice, behind a two-year-old. Posted by Tiny Boss Big Dog on the twentieth of August.
Four million eight hundred and sixty-three thousand new views in four days.
The toddler does not appear concerned.
Number two. When Kindness Goes Both Ways. Posted by Windypaws on the twentieth.
Eight million three hundred and ninety-three thousand new views in the last four days. It has held number two for the last three counts.
And number one. Fisherman Found This Heron Fighting For Its Life. Posted by Sassy on the twenty-first of August.
Ten million nine hundred and fifty-seven thousand new views in four days. It has now led the KRAK 11 animal countdown for twenty-five consecutive hours.
All three videos are on the KRAK 11 News Reel. The link is in the description.
That heron video gets you every time.
It does.
Still ahead this afternoon on KRAK 11 News, A Quick Look at Sports. Magnus Carlsen has now won twenty consecutive titles at the Esports World Cup and remains unbeaten since the tournament began. We will have that and the rest of the day's sports when we come back.
A QUICK LOOK AT SPORTS
A quick look at sports.
We have got chess, baseball, college football, and Formula One admitting it had no idea what was going wrong.
Eight months is a long time not to notice.
Magnus Carlsen wins his twenty-first consecutive Esports World Cup chess title. Still unbeaten in the tournament since it began. Undoubtedly the GOAT.
Baseball - the Cubs beat the White Sox three to two on a walk-off hit by Pete Crow-Armstrong. First Cub ever to record a walk-off hit in his first career at-bat against the Sox.
College football rankings are out. Ohio State comes in at number four in Yahoo Sports' preseason top twenty-five. They are looking to beat Michigan and win the playoff.
Formula One - Honda admits it only realized the scale of its problems in January, eight months into last season.
That is your scoreboard. Still ahead - the next KRAK 11 News, at the top of the hour, and we will have updates on the retaliatory tariffs Canada announced today.
Good afternoon, Wexler County.
Reporting behind this episode
- Canada announces 'dollar-for-dollar' retaliatory tariffs on US as high as 50%
- Brain disease in dead NFL players 'higher than previously shown'
- Dolly Parton: The life of an iconic country singer
- Trump says all mines cleared from Strait of Hormuz
- Are chickens pets? Beverly Hills couple fights ordinance violation
- Cicadas blamed for crash that left car on its side
- 'Help me, Jesus': Florida man hits alligator on I-4, flips over bike, slides across freeway
- Giant manta ray dives under Florida paddleboarder: 'Unbelievable'
- Fisherman Found This Heron Fighting For Its Life
- When Kindness Goes Both Ways.
- 120 Pounds of Dog. Hiding From Ice. Behind a Two-Year-Old.