FORCE OF NATURE

‘Lieutenant Dan,’ Tampa TikTok Star Who Refused to Evacuate, Has Survived Hurricane Milton

He even told a reporter the whole ordeal hadn’t been as bad as he’d thought it might be.

Lieutenant Dan, the TikTok star who refused to evacuate from his sailboat in Tampa Bay Harbor, has survived Hurricane Milton.

The 54-year-old, real name is Joseph Malinowski, became an online sensation for his flat-out rejection of advice to leave the area in recent days—even when it looked like Tampa would suffer a catastrophic direct hit by the storm. Milton turned south in the hours before making landfall as a Category 3 hurricane on Wednesday night in Siesta Key, around 70 miles south of Tampa.

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Kevin O’Donnell, a reporter with Tampa Bay’s WTVT, posted a video late Wednesday speaking to Malinowski at his boat. “Was it as bad as you thought?” O’Donnell asks in the footage. “No,” Malinowski answers.

Terrence Concannon, a University of Tampa senior whose videos of Malinowski have gathered tens of millions of views on TikTok, told NBC News he nicknamed Malinowski “Lieutenant Dan” after the veteran amputee Forrest Gump character. Malinowski told the network he had his left leg amputated at 16 after he was hit by a car, and that he views the Lieutenant Dan moniker the “character [he plays] on TikTok.”

“God put on my heart to come here. I came here. I’m not going to run with a little weather,” he told NBC News of his decision to stay on the boat in the face of the storm. “God didn’t send me here to die.”

The Tampa Police Department initially told NBC News Wednesday that Malinowski was planning to evacuate, and Tampa Mayor Jane Castor said at a news conference that the police had “rescued” him and that he had been taken to a shelter. But Malinowski contradicted those claims, saying officers made multiple attempts to get him to leave, but he refused.

During the storm, Malinowski joined a livestream with Adin Ross, the controversial Kick streamer who gifted Donald Trump a Tesla Cybertruck and a Rolex during a Mar-a-Lago interview in August. Ross told Malinowski that he was going to buy him a boat worth between $50,000-$100,000 and get him a “full-time Kick deal” so he can “livestream and connect with fans all over the world.”

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Dan Ladden-HallBreaking News Editor

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