Niceville Resident, Former Special Forces Officer Releases New Children’s Book Christopher Saul January 27, 2026 10:41 am Niceville One conversation with Niceville Author Dan Pace – and you are ready to nuke the clutter of busy crap in your life and focus on what’s actually important.    Instead of running with your hair on fire and a Fisher-Price molded plastic case with a roll of Band-Aids from emergency to emergency, you want to focus.    Focus on the problems you can control. Focus on the issues that actually matter. Focus instead of giving in to the industrial attention deficit disorder that has taken over American culture.    So, when Dan, full disclosure, asked me to do some marketing for his three books that will finish their releases in the first half of this year, I was excited.   His new offerings, The Whale and the Kraken (out now) and a memoir of an enlisted man during the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, It’ll Buff Out (out in February), cover vastly different sides of the same human experience. One is a children’s book that reads like a book that is definitely written for kids, but with the knowledge that parents will read it to them. The other is a reflective look at the war that many in his generation fought. It’s not a ‘strategic overview’ or something more academic (he’s already sort of addressed that here), it’s a story about soldiers.    “I started writing because I had this sense that... Read More

Niceville High School Goes on Brief Lockdown. Here’s What Happened: Christopher Saul January 27, 2026 10:27 am Niceville, Schools and Education Niceville High School’s administrators put out the all-clear just minutes after initiating a lockdown on Tuesday morning.    Niceville Principal Charlie Marello told Mid Bay News in a phone conversation the school took the action after a student saw another student with a rifle on campus.    Marello said the student had an air rifle that they were moving from one place to another in their duties as a member of the JROTC.    Once the situation was understood, the lockdown was lifted. This is the third lockdown-related issue in Niceville in the last 12 months.  Last April, Plew Elementary School went on lockdown after a message from the Okaloosa County School District Public Information Officer, Catherine Card, called the first-ever “instance of a miscommunication” with their app, supplied by the vendor Apptegy, sent to parents in error.    In August of 2025, Plew was again placed in lockdown after a suspect fleeing Niceville PD scaled the school fence, ran through the school’s property, and scaled another fence to leave.    Earlier this month, Okaloosa Academy, a Fort Walton Beach Charter School was placed on lockdown after reports of gunfire in the area of the school’s campus.  An earlier version of this story said the third lockdown took place at Fort Walton Beach High School. It took place at Okaloosa Academy. We regret the error.  This is a developing story. We’ll keep you posted as... Read More

Connor Rooney’s breakout season leads him to claim Mid Bay News Defensive Player of the Year Collin Bestor January 27, 2026 9:30 am Sports SANTA ROSA BEACH — Connor Rooney’s junior season mirrored South Walton’s resurgence; steady, physical and increasingly hard to ignore. The Seahawks linebacker emerged as the anchor of South Walton’s defense in 2025, piling up more than 100 tackles, making game-changing plays on special teams and helping lead the program to a 7-3 record and a second-round playoff appearance. Along the way, Rooney’s effort in 2025 caught the attention of Mid Bay News readers, as he earned more than 47% of the vote to be named Defensive Player of the Year, capping a season that marked a major leap from his earlier role as a rotational player. “My sophomore year, I was just, you know, just trying to get on the field, wherever I could,” Rooney said. “And this year was like, Okay, now I do something, not just trying to get on the field, but trying to be a guy that makes plays, makes a difference, and really contribute on the defense.” That growth coincided with South Walton’s first true home season in two years after spending the previous year entirely on the road and for Rooney, walking onto the field at the Seahawks’ new stadium as a junior carried extra meaning. “Oh, man, that’s exciting,” he said. “All the way games last year. I mean, I think, I mean, it didn’t really help the way... Read More

NAACP calls Gap Creek flooding an environmental justice crisis as local leaders emand Action in Fort Walton Beach Collin Bestor January 27, 2026 8:00 am Fort Walton Beach FORT WALTON BEACH — It pools in yards. It creeps under homes. It swallows low spots in the street until cars slow to a crawl and some residents decide it is safer to stay put than risk driving through water they cannot judge. For many families, it has been that way for decades, and, in the view of the Okaloosa County Branch of the NAACP, that is far too long. Last week, the NAACP renewed its call for officials to take decisive action on Gap Creek, a drainage corridor that winds through Fort Walton Beach and unincorporated Okaloosa County before emptying into Cinco Bayou. The organization says the creek and the flooding around it have become a long-running example of environmental injustice in a predominantly Black community that has struggled to get the same level of attention and investment as other parts of the county, even as local officials have acknowledged the problem and moved forward with a long-awaited planning study. “Environmental justice is a civil rights issue,” said Sabu L. Williams, president of the Okaloosa County NAACP, in a Jan. 20 press release. “The families of Sylvania Heights have been forced to live with preventable flooding and infrastructure neglect for far too long. This is a systemic failure, and it demands immediate corrective action.” But for Fort Walton Beach Councilwoman Debi... Read More