Knucklehead Award Friday Part Three

Our third winners are Maher Fanous and Bob Goldberg, a private investigator. They get the award for the following.

About 45 people in 30 homes in southwest Gainesville were evacuated late Thursday night after a woman found a device that looked like a bomb attached to her SUV.

The woman told deputies she had been going through a "messy divorce."

The device turned out to be a Global Positioning System unit that her husband hired a private detective to attach to her SUV.

The Alachua County Sheriff's Office received a call at about 9 p.m. about the suspicious device from Dousa Fanous, 35, of 10412 SW 23rd Ave., in the Cambridge Forest subdivision, said spokesman Sgt. Steve Maynard.

Fanous said she first noticed the device when she was picking up her children, ages 7 and 11, from The Family Visitation Center at NW 13th Street and NW 39th Avenue, Maynard said. Fanous handled the device, put it back on her SUV, a Jeep Grand Cherokee, drove home with her children, and then called her attorney, who told her to call police, Maynard said.

The Sheriff's Office dispatched its bomb squad to the scene and evacuated about 30 homes within a three-block radius of Queen of Peace Catholic Church, 10900 SW 24th Ave., Maynard said.

The woman told deputies she was going through a "messy divorce," so deputies talked to her husband, Maher Fanous, 47. He told deputies to call Bob Goldberg of Palm Beach County, a private investigator he had hired, Maynard said. Goldberg told deputies he attached a GPS device to car, co-owned by couple, to track her whereabouts, Maynard said.

Deputies let residents return home at about 11:45 p.m.

"Aside from this being a major expenditure for the taxpayers, it was a huge inconvenience to the 45 residents who had to be evacuated from their homes on a chilly night," Maynard said.

I certainly wouldn't like it if I had been one of those evacuated. TFM does hope the Alachua Sheriff's department, if not the temporarily displaced residents also, go after Fanous and Goldberg for costs for what they did. Before that ever happens, I make Maher Fanous and Bob Goldberg our third Knucklehead winners of the day.

Linked to- Third World County, Blue Star,