Darren Steele, 39, of Stuart, was appointed by the governor to serve as judge for the Martin County Court.

Governor Charlie Crist cited Steele’s 15 years of practicing law as giving him the “knowledge and experience necessary to serve effectively and wisely,” according to a release from the governor’s office.

Steele has practiced at Watson & Steele, a private criminal law firm, since 2000, and was assistant public defender in the 19th Judicial Circuit from 1994 to 1998.

He will fill the vacancy created by the death of Judge David Harper.

Florida will buy 403 acres in St. Lucie County to protect the Indian River Lagoon and infuse the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution with research money under a $24-million deal approved Wednesday by Gov. Charlie Crist and the Florida Cabinet.

The deal secures another piece of the 26,380-acre Indian River Lagoon Blueway project that is a priority for the state’s premier land conservation program, Florida Forever. The state has purchased more than 4,000 acres for the project.

The money from the deal, which had an appraised value of $37 million, will support Harbor Branch, which merged with Florida Atlantic University in Jupiter in 2007.

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Darrell Patrick Brown

According to arrest reports, detectives caught Darrell Patrick Brown tending to a crop of about 66 marijuana plants Tuesday afternoon. Authorities had spotted the plants several days earlier in the park near Jensen Beach and set up a hidden camera to see who was cultivating them.

Martin County Sheriff’s Sgt. John Budensiek went to Brown’s home nearby on 9th Avenue Tuesday and confronted Brown with the video. Budensiek in arrest records said Brown hung his head after the footage ended and said “You got me.”

Brown was arrested on marijuana possession and cultivation charges. He was bring held at the Martin County jail on $10,000 bail.

Ronald Sanford

Melissa Bopp

Errick Green

Lamar Rozier

Ronald Thomas Sanford, 32, and Melissa Renee Bopp, 31, both of 802 Spruce Ave. were arrested on charges of armed robbery and aggravated battery, according to the Stuart Police Department. The two remain in the Martin County Jail in lieu of $30,000 bail each.

Police still are looking for Lamar Rozier, 19, and Errick Green, 21. (more…)

PORT ST. LUCIE — The city may get a little money from the federal government for the final piece of the Crosstown Parkway.

City Manager Don Cooper sent a letter to Congressman Tom Rooney earlier this month to request the Surface Transportation Authorization Bill of 2009 include the Crosstown Parkway Extension Project, which he wrote is a critical transportation project for the city.

Cooper asked for the bill to provide $5 million of the project’s estimated cost of $100 to $125 million, but he and the city won’t know if the bill includes the project until summer, according to Rooney officials.
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JENSEN BEACH — A Port St. Lucie couple were accused Saturday of using their child’s stroller to help them shoplift clothing, according to a report released Tuesday.

Valencia Christine Ivy, 18, and Michael Jenkins Jr., 20, both of the 5600 block of Northwest Macedo Boulevard, have been charged with retail theft.

The report states security at Sears in the Treasure Coast Square mall saw the couple taking items from clothing racks and stuffing them in the bottom of their child’s stroller.

Security confronted the couple when they tried to leave without paying and recovered $246 worth of merchandise from the stroller, the report says.

Deputies issued Ivy and Jenkins notices to appear and released them at the scene.

OKEECHOBEE COUNTY — When an 11-foot alligator leaped out of the water and clamped down on his arm and chest, Antonio Prado was caught by surprise.

Prado was dragged under the water by the alligator, which bit him on his arm and chest.

“I had been there (to Nubbin Slough on Lake Okeechobee) casting my (fishing) net many times,” said Prado, 47, from his room in Lawnwood Regional Medical Center & Heart Institute in Fort Pierce. “I had seen alligators and they never bothered me.”

Prado of Okeechobee, is a truck driver. On his day off Monday, he went fishing with his son, Jonatan, 24, in Nubbin Slough.

“(The alligator) was on the side of the water, when I went in. He went in too,” Prado said. “I didn’t think about it because others had done the same. I threw in my net. When I pulled it up, he came out of the water. He pulled me under the water and we rolled around twice before I could get to the surface to call for help.”
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FORT PIERCE - A charter school company has withdrawn its application to open a school in the Tradition community of Port St. Lucie.

“In these very tenuous economic times we feel that it be best that we withdraw the application,” Rod Sasse, director of Imagine Schools, wrote in a letter to the St. Lucie County School Board.

Imagine International Academy at Tradition, as the school was tentatively called, would have enrolled kindergarten to eighth grade students. It also would have drawn much of its student population from the children of employees at a biotechnology research park, the Florida Center for Innovation at Tradition.

Charter schools are paid for with public money, but run privately.

Imagine still plans to open The Nau School for kindergarten through eighth grade students in southwestern Port St. Lucie near Becker Road, school officials said. The charter school has about 325 students enrolled so far, said Kathy McGinn, the district’s assistant superintendent for strategic planning and central services. It is slated to open next year.

The Nau School asked last year for an extended deadline for students to enroll after construction was delayed and several temporary locations fell through. The school, which had 700 students pre-registered last year, didn’t open as planned.

Imagine can submit another application to open the Tradition school, officials said, but the process would start over. (more…)

Alligator believed to have attacked fisherman on Monday. Photo provided by FWC.

The 47-year-old Okeechobee County man was casting his net in the popular fishing spot in the northeast side of Lake Okeechobee when an alligator yanked him under water on Monday afternoon.

The gator bit him across the arm and chest before Prado’s 24-year-old son, Jonatan, rushed to his aid, hitting the 11-foot beast with a pair of pliers, according to Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission officials. The hit distracted the gator, who released Prado just before his son was able to drag him back to shore.

Prado was flown to Lawnwood Regional Medical Center in Fort Pierce, where he underwent emergency surgery, according to FWC spokeswoman Gabriella Ferraro. He survived the attack with no loss of extremities.

After the attack, a trapper called to the scene by FWC caught the gator and shot him.

The gator – likely used to people and the fish tossed behind as scraps — was still in the area of the attack when the trapper arrived, Ferraro said.

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St. Lucie County Clerk of Courts Joe Smith announced this afternoon that he is offering buyouts and early retirement packages to some employees but will eventually have to lay off others by July to make up for a $546,000 budget cut.

Smith told his employees about the imminent layoffs in an email this afternoon, saying his office received the new numbers late last week from the Florida Clerks of Court Operations Corporation.

The new budget would give the office about $8.1 million for the fiscal year beginning July 1, down from more than $8.6 million they had for the current year.

The cuts come after state lawmakers in the last legislative session voted to change the way clerk’s offices are funded.

It’s disappointing,” Smith said this afternoon. “As a manager the worst thing you can tell you employees is ‘I have to let you go.’”
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