PORT ST. LUCIE - Country and western activities are planned on Feb. 7 at Tradition Field, including live music, animals, pony rides and hayrides.

Admission is $1, and will entitle everyone to participate in all the activities offered an unlimited number of times. Food vendors will also be on hand. The event will be held from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Feb. 7 at Tradition Field, 525 N.W. Peacock Blvd.

FORT PIERCE – The Fort Pierce Branch Library will begin offering infant signing through Storytime with Beebo™ at 10:30 a.m. on Feb. 13.

Especially designed for parents and their babies, Storytime with Beebo™ features games, songs and activities that highlight developmental skills. The program will provide an easy way to learn and practice signs, an opportunity to meet new friends and stimulate your baby’s growth through motor, language, social and emotional development. (more…)

PORT ST. LUCIE – Local historian and genealogist Patti Kirk will continue her genealogy lectures at the Morningside Branch Library offering talks on using the library for research as well as a historical discussion about a Civil War prison. (more…)

STUART — In September, longtime Assistant Superintendent Hank Salzler was awarded a three-year contract.

Four months later, Salzler has moved into a new role as “administrator on assignment” and is now the Martin County School District’s interim transportation director. But he still takes home a base salary of $107,946 before benefits and supplements. (more…)

STUART — Two Martin County Fire Rescue members were suspended without pay for two shifts, required to take sensitivity training and received disciplinary letters, for using the “N” word in an e-mail that was part of the preparations for a party, Fire Rescue Chief Thomas Billington said Monday.

“Both men have apologized profusely,” Billington said. “They had no intent to demean anyone, but it was sent over the county e-mail system and we can’t allow that.” (more…)

PORT ST. LUCIE — Residents near Faith Congregational Church won’t be seeing a cell phone tower by their homes in the future.

The Port St. Lucie City Council unanimously agreed Monday night to deny granting special exception to city zoning codes for a cell phone tower to be built at the church on the southeast corner of Savona and California boulevards. (more…)

WEST PALM BEACH — The Escobedo family didn’t last six months in south Florida.

Instead, Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Carlton said, the family of four met their deaths in a violent, execution-style killing October 13, 2006 at the hands of two men, Ricardo Sanchez, Jr. and Daniel Troya.

See more in the Palm Beach Post here

In opening arguments in the federal death penalty trial of Sanchez and Troya, together with the drug conspiracy trials for Danny Varela and Liana Lee Lopez, Carlton boiled down all the crimes to a single word - drugs. (more…)

Opening arguments are expected to begin today in the federal death penalty trial surrounding the 2006 slayings of a young Greenacres family of four along Florida’s Turnpike.

A panel of seven men and five women was picked Monday to decide the drug conspiracy case against Danny Varela, Liana Lee Lopez, Ricardo Sanchez and Daniel Troya. Jurors could impose death sentences against Sanchez and Troya, who are charged in the killings of the Escobedo family. (more…)

Treasure Coast drivers should be prepared for a foggy commute, particularly inland.

The National Weather Service has issued a dense fog advisory, warning that visibility in spots could dwindle to less than a quarter mile. The advisory should lift with the fog at about 9 a.m.

The rest of the day is expected to be sunny with a few clouds and high temperatures in the upper 70s from the Treasure Coast to Palm Beach County.

The forecast doesn’t change much until a strong cold front moves across South Florida on Friday.

Tychell Robinson

Patrice Johnson

Except Boyer, a 28-year-old teacher in St. Lucie County, didn’t know it. A phone call from her bank several months ago alerted her that she, like thousands of people in Florida each year, had been the victim of identity theft.

Unlike most victims of identity theft, however, Boyer learned Monday who it was that tangled up her credit, and her life, for several frustrating months: Two women, about her age, who lived less than 30 miles from her house in Port St. Lucie.

Tychell Letrein Robinson, 33, and Patrice V. Johnson, 26, both of Fort Pierce, were arrested at 3:30 a.m. at their homes on charges of identity theft stemming from about 300 such cases on the Treasure Coast, the St. Lucie County Sheriff’s office announced Monday at a press conference in Fort Pierce. (more…)