MARTIN COUNTY — Scientists were dispatched Thursday morning to aid a pigmy sperm whale found alive and stranded in shallow water, just south of Jensen Beach public beach park.

Beachgoers and nearby residents found the whale, reported to be 8-10 feet long, about 10 a.m. Thursday near the 4100 block of Northeast Ocean Drive. An officer from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission arrived and summoned experts from Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute at Florida Atlantic University.

Pygmy sperm whales “typically don’t do too well once they strand themselves,” said Jan Petri, HBIO spokesman. “They are animals that live in the deep ocean. They aren’t coastal animals and, if they get up on the beach, something’s really wrong with them.”

Steve McCulloch, manager of HBOI’s Marine Mammal Conservation Program, and Juli Goldstein, marine mammal veterinarian, were en route to the scene Thursday morning. Petri said they will evaluate the animal to determine the best course of action.

Pygmy sperm whales average 10 feet in length and maximum weight is about 900 pounds, according to information from the American Cetacean Society. The small whales maybe found alone or in pods of three to five animals.

Strandings are common to this species, especially in the southeastern United States, the society noted, and all efforts to keep stranded animals alive in aquariums have been unsuccessful.

The Jensen Beach incident is the second whale beaching reported Thursday morning in South Florida.

A dead 10-12 foot whale washed shore and was reported shortly before 8 a.m. in Delray Beach, just blocks south of Atlantic Avenue.

Petri said HBOI researchers may look for clues that these two animals were from the same pod.

Delray Beach resident Chris Hogan told reporters he was fishing for blue crab and saw the whale come ashore with the high tide. He then said he cut it up “To eat it!” he told the Palm Beach Post.

Fish and Wildlife officials are investigating the incident.

This story will be updated as more information becomes available.

The Palm Beach Post contributed to this report.

Posted September 2, 2010 at 10:49 a.m., updated September 2, 2010 at 12:18 p.m.

Marijuana bales were transferred from a beached boat on Hutchinson Island and transferred to a St. Lucie County Sheriff's Office truck and taken away. (Ronda Robbins photo)

What do a deadly plane crash, beached sailboat en route to Cuba and a boat laden with more than a half ton of marijuana have in common?

They all happened or turned up since mid-May as part of what at least one local resident called the “Jensen Beach Triangle.” The three incidents happened along or off a strip of beach by the Island Beach Resort and Shuckers restaurant on Hutchinson Island in southern St. Lucie County.

“Everybody’s saying it, too,” Ingrid Peters, 46, said Wednesday about the Jensen Beach Triangle reference. “It’s weird, Bermuda Triangle, Jensen Beach Triangle.”

Peters, a Pennsylvania native who moved to Florida when she was 17, lives in a condominium just north of Shuckers.

“It sounds crazy, the whole thing is bizarre,” Peters said. “I’ve lived here 15 years and I’ve never seen anything like this. Nothing happens here.”

The string of unusual incidents began with tragedy May 15 when a single-engine, Soviet-era plane crashed into the ocean not far offshore. The plane appeared to be attempting an aerobatics maneuver. Killed in the incident were Fort Lauderdale pilot and part-time Jensen Beach resident Don Hopkin, 60, and his passenger, James B. Dooms, 39, of North Palm Beach.

On Aug. 20, a sailboat came ashore. The sailboat owner, a man from England, and a woman who is from Germany, told customs officials they were about 2 miles offshore when their anchor line “gave way.” The sailboat stayed beached for several days.

And on Tuesday, officials found more than 1,100 pounds of marijuana — with a street value of more than $1 million — in a boat that came ashore, an incident U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement continue to investigate.

“That is really weird,” said Ronda Robbins, 48, who watched Tuesday from her 15th floor condo as the pot boat made its way ashore and a man jumped off. “It just seems everything happens right here in this area. I don’t know what it is.”

Blayne Rosely, who manages the Island Beach Resort and helps with Shuckers, on Wednesday walked along a wooden boardwalk leading to the beach, pointing out the spots where the boats came ashore and the plane crashed.

“I don’t know how to wrap it up other than it’s quite strange,” he said. “Obviously, the airplane crash was a major tragedy and there was a wedding going on actually on the beach when it happened. There were people in the wedding party that actually ran out there and tried to help.”

The Bermuda Triangle, or Devil’s Triangle, is a “mythical geographic area” off the southeast coast of the United States, according to the U.S. Coast Guard website. The points connect at Miami, Bermuda and San Juan, Puerto Rico, to connect the triangle.

The area is known for a reported “high incidence of unexplained losses of ship, small boats and aircraft.

“The Coast Guard does not recognize the existence of the so-called Bermuda Triangle as a geographic area of specific hazard to ships or planes,” the website states.

In addition to the three incidents, Robbins, a Jacksonville native, mentioned a manatee rescued in front of Shuckers and a dead, 10-foot-long hammerhead shark that washed up near her condo in the last two months.

“It looked like it had two bullet holes in it,” she said of the shark.

A handful of beachgoers dotted the windy oceanfront in the area before lunch Wednesday.

Gerry Crepeau, 56, and his 52-year-old wife, Cathy, sat in beach chairs south of Shuckers as rough surf sent crashing waves lapping at their feet.

“I think it’s a just freaky thing that happened,” Cathy Crepeau said. “It’s very unusual.”

The Crepeaus live in Massachusetts and were visiting Cathy Crepeau’s mother who lives in a condo in the area.

“Usually things happen in threes so maybe it’s done now,” Cathy Crepeau said.

PORT ST. LUCIE — Not everyone is pleased Digital Domain is proposing to build a film school in downtown West Palm Beach.

Port St. Lucie City Councilwoman Michelle Berger told city manager Jerry Bentrott she was “extremely” disappointed that a new Florida State University film school would be built in West Palm Beach rather than Port St. Lucie.

“How were we left out of this?” Berger asked Bentrott in an Aug. 30 e-mail. “I feel like it’s being subsidized by our taxpayers.”

City officials, including former cty manager Don Cooper, who helped structure an incentive package for Digital Domain last year, have said no local tax dollars have gone into the deal.

Berger couldn’t be reached for comment Wednesday.

On Monday, Digital Domain Holdings CEO John Textor went in front of West Palm Beach city leaders to pitch his proposal to build a film school in conjunction with the Florida State University College of Motion Picture Arts. West Palm Beach city commissioners are expected to vote on the project Sept. 13.

Under the proposed agreement, West Palm Beach would give Digital Domain prime land near the Kravis Center, and the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency would provide $25 million in bonds and cash grants.

Textor said the film school would create up to 200 jobs over five years. The school would start out with 1,000 students with room to expand to 3,000 in the future, Textor said.

Last year, Port St. Lucie agreed to give Digital Domain a $51.8 million incentive deal to build a 150,000-square-foot movie animation and video production studio in Tradition in exchange for the company creating 500 jobs, paying an average salary of $65,000, by 2014. The state also agreed to pitch in another $20 million.

The city’s incentive deal with Digital Domain was a combination of federal stimulus money, and money from bond issues and developers. Digital Domain will be responsible for repaying the bonds to the city through lease payments on the studio.

Textor said Digital Domain in Port St. Lucie currently employs 46 people and plans to exceed more than 50 employees by the end of this week.

Textor said Wednesday the plan all along had been to build the film school in Orlando, but it made more sense to put the school closer to Digital Domain’s headquarters in Port St. Lucie. Its headquarters in Port St. Lucie will produce visual effects, video games and military simulation.

Digital Domain is working with Indian River State College on its digital media curriculum and is leasing temporary space at the college for the next two years while working on motion pictures.

Textor said the film school in West Palm Beach would be an adjunct to the company’s main production studio in Port St. Lucie.

“Indian River State College should be the big dog here,” Textor said. “FSU and Digital Domain are committed to help IRSC to become stronger.”

Textor said Indian River State College’s curriculum focuses more on broad digital media, including motion graphics and 3-D modeling. By working with Digital Domain, the college would have the option to adopt a curriculum created by FSU that focuses on visual effects and digital animation, he said.

“We thought Port St. Lucie was the right town for our business, for our headquarters, for the people in our industry that have families,” Textor said. “But we had concerns about the younger side of our market and would they come (to Port St. Lucie)? You can’t get in the mind of a 21-year-old who’s dreaming about the big-city experience. Within the state, I think we need to have a wider footprint.”

City councilman Chris Cooper initially echoed Berger’s concerns about the West Palm Beach location. However, he said the city can’t “compete with the fund-raising mechanisms they’re looking at.”

Governments, Cooper said, “are tapped out on these things. (West Palm Beach) has the philanthropists that will be able to donate money to the college.”

Mayor Patricia Christensen agreed that larger cities have more resources.

“I am actually much happier that it’s going to be in West Palm Beach instead of Orlando because it’s much closer,” she said. “The students will be able to travel here to Tradition a lot easier versus if they were up in Orlando, and they will have access to the design studio.”

In April, Digital Domain contracted with FSU’s film school to create a curriculum for the Digital Domain Institute in West Palm Beach. FSU also will offer the same curriculum to IRSC.

The decision to put the film school in West Palm Beach was Textor’s.

“We’re agnostic on the location,” said Frank Patterson, dean of Florida State University’s film school. “Any of this stuff that we create for Digital Domain Holdings is intended to benefit the educational partners of Digital Domain. The first partner, of course, is Indian River (State College).”

Textor sees the Port St. Lucie and West Palm Beach sites as complementary to each other.

“The airport, the television stations, the newspapers, the commuting working relationship between companies has made West Palm Beach and Port St. Lucie very much the same market,” he said. “The most important thing is that people understand that the idea to have a sister facility was at the very first discussion with Port St. Lucie because we thought it would make for a stronger Port St. Lucie headquarters facility.”

Rodney McGill (Photo: Martin County Sheriff's Office)

Around this time last year, the former pastor, radio show host and real estate mogul had sat in a packed courtroom and openly wished pestilence and cancer upon everyone who helped convict him on racketeering and grand theft charges.

But on Tuesday the only victim McGill identified in the room was himself — afflicted, he said, by jail guards who took his legal paperwork, investigators who intimidated witnesses against attending hearings and Circuit Judge Sherwood Bauer, who has denied most of the requests he has written while battling more fraud charges from jail.

“OK, well, if you’re going to deny me my due process, then that’s fine,” McGill, 49, told Bauer after the judge denied his request to have unrestricted access to a phone and to have a private investigator appointed to help him.

McGill’s conviction and 20-year prison sentence in September 2009 closed the case for three women duped into purchasing homes as part of what turned out to be a home investment scheme that McGill promoted on his radio show. But McGill’s troubles are far from over.

He is scheduled to stand trial in November on charges he got an elderly Treasure Coast couple to give him $40,000, promising them a $10,000 return in 10 days if they invested in the refinancing of the mortgage on his former church, the New Hope Outreach Center in Jensen Beach.

McGill brokered the deal on the phone in September 2008, investigators said, calling the couple through a third party to hide the fact that he was at the Martin County jail already awaiting trial on the earlier fraud charges.

In the fall of 2008, the image of Rodney McGill and his wife, Shalonda, as multimillionaires riding to and from their luxury waterfront home in Bentleys and Mercedes-Benzes was still a recent memory for many who say they lost their savings or had their credit ruined in bad business deals with the couple.

As McGill stood in court Tuesday in his standard-issue jail uniform, he had none of the trappings of his former wealth.
Also gone was his wife, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison last year on the racketeering charges. She refused a plea deal but later said she was the victim of Rodney McGill’s emotional and physical abuse. She is scheduled to be released in October 2018.

Rodney McGill still has not lost the bravado that punctuated his statements during his 2009 trial, where he alternately represented himself and accepted help from the Miami attorney his family hired.

In court Tuesday, he questioned Martin County jail deputies he accused of taking some of his legal paperwork. He asked the same questions over and over, telling the deputies they had admitted reading his legal paperwork after they consistently denied doing so.

Assistant State Attorney David Lustgarten objected several times to the questioning, and Bauer cautioned McGill again after he claimed his rights were being denied.

“You always do this,” Bauer told McGill. “You come out and make all these claims, and then when I ask you for details you back off and claim I’m denying you your due process.”

McGill vowed that he would keep appealing Bauer’s rulings. He said he would not be ready for his trial, scheduled for Nov. 15.

“I don’t care about none of this you’re saying right here,” McGill said. “I’m appealing all of this.”

Woods' Martin County house (Click on the photo for more)

Official records that just popped up in Martin County hint that Woods will have to pay ex-wife Elin Nordegren $54 million by January 2016 — or risk losing the house he spent five years building.

How do I know?

Well, the philandering club-swinger took out a $54 million-mortgage Friday, almost two weeks after his quickie divorce was finalized in Panama City.

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Kobi Anderson

A 16-year-old Stuart youth will likely begin a 25-year prison term in October after pleading no contest to second-degree felony murder Tuesday.

Kobi Buchae Anderson, of the 900 Block of Southeast 13th Street in Stuart, was 15 when he delivered a single fatal blow to the side of Keith Hall’s head in April 2009.

Just hours after he was released from prison on April 5, 2009, Hall approached Anderson, then 15, and his co-defendant, James Louis LaForteza, in the parking lot of a Stuart convenience store to buy narcotics. The transaction went awry and witnesses said a fight broke out.

Assistant State Attorney Bernard Romero said Anderson’s single punch to side of 38-year-old Hall’s head sent him to Martin Memorial Medical Center, where he died three days later.

Anderson and LaForteza were arrested on April 21 and subsequently charged with first-degree felony murder.

Though Romero conceded prosecutors could not show intent or premeditation in the killing, such a showing is unnecessary if the death comes during a commission of a felony, Romero said.

Anderson said little during his change of plea hearing other than briefly answering questions posed by Circuit Judge Sherwood Bauer to determine whether his change of plea was voluntary and that he understood the implications of his actions.

Though he faced a possible life term, Romero said Anderson’s age was a significant consideration in coming to the plea deal.

Bauer ordered a pre-sentence investigation and predisposition investigation, required due to Anderson’s age, ahead of his sentencing, which is set for 1:30 p.m. on Oct. 8.

Anderson will serve the initial portion of his sentence in a Department of Corrections youth facility, until he is old enough to be transferred to the state’s general inmate population, Romero said.

A large pile of tires at a recycling plant in St. Lucie County began burning Tuesday afternoon. (CATHERINE CHENEY/St. Lucie County Fire-Rescue)

By WPTV

Smoke continues to billow from a tire fire in St. Lucie County.

It began at a recycling plant at 9675 Range Line Road.

3 brush trucks, 2 engines, 2 tankers, 1 rescue truck and a battalion chief have responded to the scene.

The tires burned slowly, but by 5 a.m. Wednesday the fire was under control.

Fire investigators had been concerned the flames might spread to an open grassy area.

According to the St. Lucie County Fire Department there have been no injuries and no buildings have been damaged or are in danger. There are very few homes nearby.

Fire officials told WPTV.com that they hope to have it entirely extinguished within 48 hours.

Tire fires can burn for days.

PORT ST. LUCIE — Fewer police officers on the streets means minor traffic accidents and some crimes won’t be investigated, Police Chief Donald Shinnamon said Tuesday.

Last week’s announcement that 24 police officers and three civilian employees would be laid off Sept. 24 represents a total of 89 jobs lost within the department since 2008, Shinnamon said. The department had 262 sworn officers in the 2007-2008 budget year and is now down to 206, Shinnamon said.

“That’s 25 percent of the police department gone in the last two years,” he said. “There is nothing left to cut. We are in basic essential services mode, and we can go no further.”

Earlier this year, city manager Jerry Bentrott directed all city department heads to cut their budgets by 15 percent to reduce a $10 million deficit in the budget.

For Shinnamon, that meant losing 24 police officers, 13 civilian employees and not filling 10 additional officer positions after already cutting the department to the bone and reducing $1 million in overtime costs.

Shinnamon said he looked at every possible way to reduce costs, including decreasing costs for remote Internet access from patrol cars, which saved two police officer jobs.

The latest round of cuts represent a $1.9 million savings to the police budget, Shinnamon said. In the last two years, Shinnamon has been given a mandate to cut his budget by $9.5 million.

This latest round of cuts means losing nine detectives in the division and putting them back on road patrol. It also means police won’t be investigating civil matters, such as landlord and tenant disputes. The department’s sex offender monitor was included in the cuts and that task will be reassigned to an officer on a part-time basis.

“The level of service that we are able to provide in the past we can longer maintain that very high level of service given the reduction of 89 people,” Shinnamon said. “We’re going to maintain the same coverage with the people in marked patrol cars and that answer 911 calls. But everything else beyond that is either eliminated or reduced.”

With 40 percent of the criminal investigation division being eliminated, criminal cases that would have been investigated in the past to identify suspects and put them behind bars won’t be investigated, Shinnamon said.

“If we don’t arrest them and put them in jail then they are still on the street committing crimes,” he said.

The city is experiencing an increase in gang activity, and the two detectives assigned to gangs will not be reduced, Shinnamon said. He also said detectives assigned to the narcotics division will not be reduced given the city’s problems with marijuana grow houses.

Minor traffic accidents involving no injuries, such as crashes in shopping center parking lots, also will no longer be handled by the Police Department and will be handled by individuals involved in the accident exchanging contact and insurance information.

The cuts have Port St. Lucie resident Larry Massey, 60, concerned.

Massey was in Georgia visiting his daughter while $15,000 worth of goods, including family mementos and jewelry was stolen in July from his home, he said.

Massey is circulating a petition to try and stop the police cuts. He said he’s collected more than 100 signatures and plans to present the petition to the city council at its 7 p.m. Sept. 13 meeting.

Police spokesman Tom Nichols said the detective who investigated Massey’s case arrested the suspect. He said that detective is being assigned to road patrol because of the cuts.

Massey said he won’t feel safe knowing there’s 24 fewer officers protecting the city.

“As much unemployment as there is out there now, people are going to do whatever they have to do to keep their families alive,” Massey said. “I think we are losing valuable assets. We all pay taxes here. We need the protection. They can’t be everywhere. But when you take out 24 officers, that’s a big gap. I don’t think there will be enough manpower to protect everybody.”

Last week, city councilman Chris Cooper called for an emergency “shade” meeting Friday with the city council and city staff to discuss union negotiations and the police layoffs. Meetings to discuss union negotiations are allowed to be closed to the public and the media under the state’s Government-in-the-Sunshine law.

Cooper said he couldn’t specifically disclose what the council discussed in Friday’s closed-door meeting.

“As far as I’m concerned, really nothing has changed,” Cooper said. “Shinnamon was asked to cut his budget by 15 percent and in order to do that he had to make these cuts, and I have to support him in a round about theory because he has to balance his budget. I didn’t micromanage Parks and Recreation when they were asked to cut their budget by 15 percent.”

So far this year, the city has cut 145 positions, including 19 in parks and recreation and six in public works, said human resources director Susan Williams.

The police unions had rallies at city council meetings and news conferences outside of city hall denouncing the layoffs.

During the weekend, a police officer created a Facebook page, “Stop the layoffs of Port St. Lucie’s police officers.” The page has attracted more than 1,000 “fans.”

“It just lays out support for the people who are being laid off,” said Scott Johnson, the local president of the International Union of Police Associations, which represents the city’s police officers.

Law enforcement agents offload bales of marijuana from a boat that washed ashore in St. Lucie County (Courtesy of Ronda Robbins and TCPalm.com)

By Will Greenlee
HUTCHINSON ISLAND — On the balcony of her 15th-floor condo early Tuesday, Ronda Robbins thought she saw a boat coming closer and closer to the shore.

Robbins, 48, got her glasses and after confirming it was a vessel, called the U.S. Coast Guard, thinking the boat may be experiencing engine problems. Waves lapped over the boat. As it got 10 to 12 feet from shore, a man with no shirt or shoes ran away, she said.

As the morning unfolded, St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office and federal officials determined the 33-foot boat, which came ashore about 6:40 a.m. near the 10000 block of South Ocean Drive, contained about 1,100 pounds of neatly-packaged marijuana. Officials also detained a man found walking nearby along South Ocean Drive, and notified U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
A sheriff’s official said investigators thought the man, whose name was not released, might have been on the boat. He told authorities he was from Miami and had no identification. He hasn’t explained his presence in the area.

Several hours later, Nicole Navas, an ICE spokeswoman, said no one was in custody and that special agents continue to investigate. She said ICE is the lead agency and that the roughly 1,100 pounds — more than a half-ton with an estimated street value of more than $1 million — of pot was in ICE custody.

“In order to preserve the integrity of this investigation, we are not at liberty to provide more details,” Navas said via e-mail.

Deputies Tuesday morning stopped people leaving Hutchinson Island in attempts to determine whether there were other people associated with the incident.

“There was every cop, every DEA, every CIA, you name it they were there,” Robbins said. “They had the entire island blocked off.”

Robbins said she went down on the beach after law enforcement arrived and saw officials loading what she described as burlap sacks onto an all-terrain vehicle. The ATV ferried the bags to a pickup.

“I’ve never seen anything like that,” she said. “It was amazing. It was amazing.”

The general area where the boat came ashore has been the scene of a number of unusual incidents in recent months.

In May, two men died after a single-engine Soviet-era plane plunged into the ocean not far offshore. Killed in the crash were Fort Lauderdale pilot and part-time Jensen Beach resident Donald T. Hopkin, 60, and his passenger, James B. Dooms, 39, of North Palm Beach.

In August, a sailboat came ashore. The sailboat owner, a man from England, and a woman, who is from Germany, told customs officials they were headed to Cuba from the Bahamas, said Elee Erice, spokeswoman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Said Robbins, “If you want action, entertainment, come over here.”

Radio personality Jennifer Ross, who was canned a year ago from WRMF-97.9 FM’s morning show and replaced by younger, cheaper talent, is returning to the station — but not to the airwaves.

Ross, 52, is scheduled to take over as director of community affairs next week, said station boss Elizabeth Hamma. The job’s description is unclear.

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