STUART — A Martin County jail inmate charged with aggravated battery apparently hung himself with a length of cloth Monday night, according to sheriff’s officials.

Tim Letendre, 49, was found at 10 p.m. hanging from an air conditioning vent. Jail medical personnel and deputies attempted CPR and called Martin County Fire Rescue officials, who arrived within minutes.

He was pronounced dead at the scene.
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Tim Letendre

By Keona Gardner

STUART — A Saturday evening argument about money between two friends ended when one used a wrench to strike the other, according to a Martin County Sheriff’s Office arrest report.

On Saturday deputies charged Tim Letendre, 49, of the 5600 block of Southeast Collins Avenue, with aggravated battery after his friend accused him of hitting him in the back of the head with a pipe wrench, the report states.

Letendre told deputies the two argued about money the friend owed him. Letendre claimed the friend grabbed a pipe wrench and that he took the tool away from his friend and hit him with it, the report states.

As of Monday, Letendre was being held at the Martin County Jail on $10,000 bail.

Dustin Delater

By Keona Gardner

STUART — A Sunday evening argument about food stamps resulted in a stabbing, according to a Martin County Sheriff’s Office arrest report.

When deputies arrived at home in the 4800 block of Southeast Flounder Avenue they found a man holding his stomach and Dustin Delater, 31, coming from a trailer behind the home with a red box cutter and a 12- to 14- inch kitchen knife in his hand, the report states.

Delater told deputies he stabbed the man in retaliation for a prior incident when the man used a box cutter to cut Delater on his left knee and middle finger.

Witnesses told deputies that before the stabbing the two men had a confrontation about food stamps. During that exchange, Delater met the man at the door with a box cutter and a Phillips screwdriver. But the man left and later that day returned with two witnesses to resolved the unspecified food stamp issue.

During the second encounter, Delater, with a knife, approached the car where the man was sitting. The man saw the knife, got out of the car and started running around a parked vehicle to get away from Delater, who was now chasing the man. The man tripped and fell to the ground and Delater stabbed the man in the stomach, the report states.

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Kevin Brann

By Will Greenlee

A driver with a “sexual anus plug in his rectum” was jailed after investigators say he rear-ended another driver and had more than five times the legal limit of alcohol in his blood, according to a recently released arrest affidavit.

What could be called the case of the soused driver with the sex toy in his hindquarters happened about 11:20 a.m. Feb. 24 as Martin County Sheriff’s investigators went to a two-vehicle crash at U.S. 1 and Seabranch Boulevard in Hobe Sound.

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Walton Teran

By Will Greenlee

ST. LUCIE COUNTY — Two people were arrested Monday after St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office investigators found the home where they live with five children to be filthy, infested with roaches and having a nonworking bathroom, according to records released Tuesday.

Walton Juarez Teran, 38, and 34-year-old Stephanie Lynn Teran, both of the 6300 block of Fort Pierce Boulevard, each were arrested Monday on a felony child neglect charge.

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Ralph Ferretti

By Will Greenlee

PORT ST. LUCIE — A 53-year-old man accused of showing up at the home of a Port St. Lucie police officer who issued him a speeding ticket and telling the officer’s wife he wanted to talk to the officer “man-to-man” was arrested, according to a police report released Wednesday.

Ralph Ferretti, of the 500 block of Southeast Felix Avenue in Port St. Lucie, was arrested Feb. 18 on a corrupt by threat public servant or family charge in connection with the incidents.

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Seven adults and one child were left homeless by an early Saturday morning fire that destroyed a triplex in the 2700 block of Indian Street.

Martin County Fire Rescue received a call at 1:41 a.m. and arrived at the scene to discover the residential building fully involved in flames, Fire Rescue Administration Chief Jon Belding said. Two of the building’s three units were occupied, but no injuries were reported.

Belding said the cause of the fire remained under investigation Saturday and the American Red Cross was notified to assist the building’s residents with temporary shelter.

Christopher Evers walks west on 40th Street Friday Feb. 17, 2012 after being released from the Indian River County Jail, which can be seen over his right shoulder. (ALEX BOERNER/Treasure Coast Newspapers)

By Elliott Jones

VERO BEACH — After being jailed for almost eight years awaiting trial on charges of killing his infant daughter in 2002, Christopher Evers left the county jail a free man at 2 p.m. Friday.

He walked alone, passing barbed-wire fences and walls that long surrounded him.

“I can’t believe it is over,” said the 32-year-old father at the end one of longest pretrial detentions in the county’s history, according to judicial officials.

He didn’t call relatives. He wanted to surprise them. But one of them picked him up in a car a quarter mile from the jail.

Four hours earlier his court saga ended when he finally pleaded no contest to a reduced charge of manslaughter in the shaken-baby death of his daughter, Katherine, in 2002.

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An image from a surveillance camera shows two suspects in recent thefts at Port St. Lucie hotels. (Port St. Lucie Police Dept.)

By Will Greenlee

PORT ST. LUCIE — Port St. Lucie police are investigating three incidents this month at two St. Lucie West hotels in which at least two people might be linked to efforts to steal things from rooms while cleaning staff is distracted, according to a police spokesman Wednesday and reports.

In a Feb. 4 case at a SpringHill Suites on Northwest Courtyard Circle near Interstate 95, a man said he noticed several things missing from his room after he returned from having breakfast with his wife. The 48-year-old man said “several FAA and FCC high-security clearance airport ID badges” were stolen, along with a computer, camera, binoculars, curling iron, cash and other items.

“They’re going up to the floors where housekeeping is, and while the housekeepers are inside the rooms cleaning, the suspects are going in and they’re rummaging through personal belongings left behind,” said Officer Tom Nichols, Port St. Lucie police spokesman.

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By Eric Pfahler

STUART — American Energy Innovations is returning more than $800,000 in state and county incentives after opting to change its product line.

AEI had planned on hiring 600 by the end of 2015 and had hired 40 as part of a $4 million state and county incentive package. Instead, the company is handing back the money it has already received, refusing additional incentives and has laid off 25 of its current staff.

In an email to Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers, AEI Controller Ed Kelley wrote the company hopes to rehire as many furloughed workers as possible and the company still plans to grow in Martin County.

“We wanted to be proactive and honest in our approach to returning the incentive monies,” Kelley wrote. “The state of Florida and Martin County faced a competitive landscape when we were considering the best location for this company. … We still believe that Martin County is the best location to develop our product and we intend to move forward in this community.”

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