STUART — Three people were attacked by a swarm of bees on Monday that came from a hive about the size of a car engine.

“I have never experienced anything like this before in my life,” said Kendall Todd, owner of Affordable Pressure Cleaning in Palm City.

Todd and his brother were pressure cleaning Becky Engebretsen’s driveway in the 1800 block of Northwest River Point Drive, when they first started noticing some bees. After spraying the bees with water, more continued to show up until finally they were forced to take off on foot.
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A Palm City man reported he was stabbed early this morning, and detectives are now investigating the incident.

Coquina Cove resident Paul Embry, 33, told Martin County Sheriff’s detectives that he saw a teen by his vehicle at about 5:30 a.m. He said he confronted the boy and then felt what seemed like a “bee sting” in his abdomen, according to sheriff’s spokeswoman Rhonda Irons.

A relative drove Embry to the hospital for treatment. His injuries do not seem to be life-threatening, Irons said.

Detectives have not yet recovered a weapon.

PALM CITY — Hard financial times have turned tumultuous at a local church, with the pastor using a sheriff’s deputy to keep elders outside the sanctuary doors and the elders, in turn, filing suit to remove the pastor.

In the lawsuit filed Wednesday in Martin County Circuit Court, seven members of Palm City Christian Church charge Pastor Anthony “Pastor Tony” Galbicka with breach of fiduciary duty and seek a ruling “ousting” him and voiding the “improper and/or illegal” actions he took.

The suit also alleges Galbicka slandered one plaintiff, Edward Taudien, when the pastor told other church members Taudien had stolen money from the church. The suit counters that Taudien had donated more than $168,000 to the church and loaned it $200,000 to build the sanctuary at 6450 Martin Highway in western Palm City.

Galbicka could not be reached Thursday at his home in Palm City, at the church, via telephone or by e-mail.

Robert J. Watson, a Stuart attorney representing the plaintiffs, said he expects a hearing on his request for a temporary restraining order against Galbicka to be scheduled late this month or early August.

According to the lawsuit, the 80-member church “began to struggle financially” this year; at a May 28 meeting attended by Galbicka, the elders approved several spending cuts, including reducing the pastor’s salary “by a modest percentage.”

Watson said the cut was to be about 15 percent, adding the church paid Galbicka’s housing and car expenses plus $22,000 a year. Details of how to make the cut had not been worked out, he said. (more…)

When Martin County Commissioner Ed Ciampi ran for office about a year ago he heard one question over and over again: Do you want to build the Indian Street Bridge?

Ciampi, a supporter of the proposed bridge, always said yes, but with a mental shrug.

“I kind of felt, ‘Why are we talking about this? It’s never going to happen,’ ” he said.

That changed this year when a state legislative commission earmarked it for $128 million in federal stimulus dollars and the White House later reviewed the project and said it could move forward with the stimulus money. Now the construction of what some have called Florida’s Bridge to Nowhere seems imminent.

What does this mean for Martin County?

The answer, in classic Martin County fashion, depends on your stance on growth. That’s because the county is a community often polarized by questions of development, and perhaps no other road project has been as divisive as the Indian Street Bridge.

The bridge, which would provide a second span across the South Fork of the St. Lucie River between Palm City and Stuart, has been planned for decades. And it has been argued about for just as long.

Supporters of the project, which include four of five county commissioners, say the second bridge will alleviate traffic congestion in and out of Palm City, provide faster access to Martin Memorial Medical Center in Stuart, and ease economic pain in the region by creating more than 3,500 jobs during its estimated three-year construction.

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PALM CITY — Martin County Commissioner Ed Ciampi closed his ice cream and chocolate shop at the Publix shopping center on Martin Highway in May and anticipates reopening in late July at a new location in a strip mall on Mapp Road.

It was the second setback for Ciampi’s 3-year-old chain of “Sweet Sarah’s” ice cream and chocolate shops. Last year, Ciampi closed his shop in Port St. Lucie because of a lack of traffic at a shopping center near Veteran’s Memorial Park.

“We all have to adapt to the current economic conditions and I’m doing just that,” Ciampi said. “Three or four years ago, when I started this process, the economy was different. So now I’m making smart decisions to stay in business.”
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PALM CITY — A longtime honey and bee company on the Treasure Coast is having problems at its Palm City site for more than a year with people knocking over its bee hives.

Gruwell Apiary has been watching over bees for about three generations in the Treasure Coast. With about 900 hives on 30 different properties, this family of beekeepers doesn’t understand why people would want to hurt the bee hives.

“We are just helping the community,” said David Gruwell, a third generation beekeeper. “A third of the fruits and vegetables we eat would disappear if all the bees die. Everything would disappear after four to five years. It’s just a matter of time and we are over.”

For the past year, Gruwell has been finding ATV and golf cart tracks on their Palm City property after multiple hives were knocked over. Alcohol and beer bottles have also been found on the family’s property.

The most recent incident was this week. When Gruwell checked on the Palm City property located on Mistletoe Lane Wednesday he found five hives knocked over. The colony in one of those hives died and $2,500 in bees and honey was lost.

In the past year the Gruwell family has lost about $5,000 in honey and bees because of the incidents. (more…)

The White House is reviewing the merits of the proposed Indian Street Bridge as a response to a U.S. senator who included the span in his list of 100 questionable federal stimulus projects.

The review is being conducted only because it was raised by U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., not because it is a concern of the White House.

The review could be quickly wrapped up as the White House has already determined that one-third of the items highlighted by Coburn in a report released Tuesday are not stimulus projects or are misleading characterizations of stimulus projects.
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Detectives with the Martin County Sheriff’s Office Criminal Investigations Unit in partnership with the Division of Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco conducted an undercover operation on Thursday, when they checked 17 convenience stores throughout Martin County to see if they sold alcohol to minors.

One-hundred percent compliance was reported on that date. No sales were made to the concerned citizen volunteer that worked with detectives.

This operation was the second conducted in the past thirty days. Two arrests were previously made on May 7, 2009. These operations continue year-round.

Christopher Reber

Christopher Reber, 23, was arrested last Wednesday on those charges after his release from St. Mary’s Medical Center in West Palm Beach, Martin County Sheriff’s spokeswoman Rhonda Irons said.

Reber was shot when he broke into Joe Russo and Linda Schultz’s house the morning of April 16, sheriff’s investigators say.

That morning Reber entered the home in the 1500 block of Southwest Crossing Circle after shooting into a sliding glass door, then headed to an upstairs bedroom where Schultz was waiting with a handgun, according to sheriff’s reports.

Schultz told deputies she shot at Reber three times, striking him in the torso.

Reber then fled in his mother’s black Ford Contour and drove to her condo in the 1200 block of Southeast Parkview Place.

The mother told detectives her son took a shower and asked her to take him to the Suburban Lodge Extended Stay Hotel on U.S. 1 in Stuart.
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INDIANTOWN - Three new fires have been reported in western Martin County where between 2,000 acres and 3,000 acres have burned since Sunday.

The three new fires - making it a total of 16 fires - were small and two were quickly extinguished, said Melissa Yunas, a spokeswoman for the state Division of Forestry.

No homes are being threatened, Yunas said. One of the fires destroyed two homes in Indiantown and damaged several others, she said.

Three children, ages 7, 8 and 10, were arrested earlier this week for allegedly setting at least one of the larger fires near Indiantown. The children were charged with a third-degree felony and released to their parents.