Joseph Malinowski, who went viral on TikTok as ‘Lieutenant Dan’ after he chose not to evacuate his boat in Florida during Hurricane Milton, has been arrested after refusing to move his vessel
A sailor who gained internet fame after deciding to brave Hurricane Milton on his boat has been arrested for allegedly refusing to move his vessel.
The Florida man, Joseph Malinowski, known as Lieutenant Dan on TikTok, was apprehended by Tampa Police Department officers on Friday.
The arrest came after the 54-year-old reportedly refused to relocate his boat due to an alleged health hazard. At a meeting on Thursday, police informed Malinowski that he lacked proper waste disposal records for his boat and an accessible marine sanitation device.
The one-legged sailor was instructed to move his boat from Bayshore Linear Park on Thursday, with authorities citing it as a public health hazard – but it remained in place on Friday morning. Upon their return on Friday, police arrested Malinowski and took him to jail, listing his occupation as ‘Tik Tok Star’ on his arrest notice.
Who Is Lieutenant Dan? Tampa man defies evacuation orders during Hurricane Milton and lives to tell the tale
Malinowski, known as ‘Lieutenant Dan’ on TikTok, a nickname he reportedly earned after losing his leg in a car accident at 16, became famous for his posts. The name references a character from the Stephen Spielberg film Forrest Gump, a Vietnam veteran who loses both legs below the knee and braves a storm on his fishing boat.
Malinowski announced on TikTok that he would ignore evacuation warnings for Hurricane Milton, choosing instead to weather the storm on his 20-foot boat.
“The safest place to be is on a boat in a flood. We learned that with Noah,” he told his followers. “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.”
Malinowski proclaimed as he faced the 120mph wrath of the storm, keeping his hefty online family of over 242,900 in the loop.
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After braving the tempest, a GoFundMe page gave rise to a pool of $44,000 for his sunken dreams, and fellow internet sailor Adin Ross pledged a new vessel to navigate his future streams. But Malinowski’s newfound digital notoriety unearthed a checkerboard past with the law, detailing over 70 encounters with Florida and North Carolina’s police since 2012, per Mail Online’s reports. His rap sheet sketches a canvas of assault, petty thefts, drug run-ins, resistance to arrest, burglary, battery.
