Teens it’s not that Publix stores don’t want your money from alcoholic beverage sales, it’s just that they are prepared to wait for it until you are old enough to legally buy the items.

A review of five years of citations issued for selling to underage persons on the Treasure Coast showed no violations for Publix Super Markets Inc., which has 29 stores on the Treasure Coast and Okeechobee County. (more…)

More than 200 businesses on the Treasure Coast and in Okeechobee County have been cited for selling alcohol to underage people, according to state records from January 2004 to August 2009. Some of those businesses were repeatedly cited.

“It’s a widespread problem,” Indian River County Sheriff Deryl Loar said.

A Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers review of five years of citations from the state Division of Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco show some stores stores have been cited three times. (more…)

More than 200 businesses on the Treasure Coast and in Okeechobeen County have been cited for selling alcohol to underage people, according to state records from January 2004 to August 2009. Some of those businesses were repeatedly cited.

“It’s a widespread problem,” Indian River County Sheriff Deryl Loar said.

A Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers review of five years of citations from the state Division of Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco show some stores stores have been cited three times — once each year.

Most of the businesses cited are gas stations/convenience stores because of their accessibility, Loar said.

Access of alcoholic beverages to people younger than 21 - the legal drinking age - has been in the news since the Aug. 4 crash that killed three Stuart teens. Crushed beer cans were found at the crash scene of U.S. 1 and Cove Road, where 18-year-olds Christopher Brigilo and Nicholas Coady and 16-year-old Connor Graver died.

The Florida Highway Patrol has yet to release toxicology reports on the three.

Days earlier on Aug. 1, crushed beer cans also were found in the bed of a pickup truck in Key West where three Okeechobee residents — two teens and a 20-year old — died in a head-on collision with a tractor trailer.

Any store that sells to one teen instantly becomes known by other teens, said Lt. Kevin Dietrich of the St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office.

“A few of them find out which business sell to kids and it spreads like wildfire,” he said.

Convenience store giant 7-Eleven had a total 12 citations on the Treasure Coast from 2004 to 2009, the most for any company, state records show.

Spokeswoman Margaret Chabris said the company is serious about training employees at corporation-owned stores and those franchises owned by individuals.

It is mandatory for all employees of corporate-owned stores to attend the Come of Age program, where employees learn about the laws for the sales of alcohol and tobacco products and do role playing during which employees practice refusing a sale, she said.

It’s not a requirement for employees of franchise-owned stores. However, if the franchise store is repeatedly cited for selling to minors, it could lose its franchise status, Chabris said.

Despite many of the businesses having a history of citations, their alcohol licenses have not been revoked and the stores have not been closed because they haven’t been cited more than three times in a calendar year, division spokeswoman Alexis Lambert said.

The first time a business is cited, it could be fined up to $1,000 and its alcohol license suspended up to seven days; the second time up to a $3,000 fine and suspended license up to 30 days; the third time in a year, its license can be revoked, she said.

The penalties are not meant to harm business owners, division Lt. Kent Stanton said.

“We don’t want to put stores out of business, but we want them to comply with the law,” he said.

Those penalties aren’t enough, said state officials with Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

“We need stricter consequences and more enforcement and stronger consequences for those who sell to minors,” said Don Murray, state executive director of MADD.

Dietrich said enforcement is needed as convenience stores stock up with energy drinks that contain alcohol and are popular with teens.

The division works with local law enforcement officers several times a year in undercover stings using minors and issuing citations for business caught selling to them, Stanton said.

When conducting the sting, authorities must use minors who look their age so not to trick store clerks, but to show if someone of average intelligence could decide if the buyer was underage, he said.

“We can’t pick the oldest-looking kid with facial hair,” Stanton said, “and the girls can’t dress provocatively.”

Store clerks making the sale are charged with a misdemeanor and in Indian River and St. Lucie counties, given a notice to appear in court. In Martin County, the seller is arrested and booked in the county jail, said Sgt. Mark Middleton of the Martin County Sheriff’s Office.

Loar said a citation is issued because there is not enough room in the Indian River County Jail.

Jail time is also a possibility for underage people caught with alcohol, said Adam Guzi, supervisor of court for the State’s Attorney Office in Martin County.

Minors are charged with a misdemeanor possession of alcohol and entered into the juvenile justice system and given the option to attend substance abuse counseling, he said.

While teens target convenience stores, most times getting alcohol is as simple as opening the refrigerator or the family’s liquor cabinet, Middleton said.

“At home, when parents open a bottle of wine they don’t keep track of how much they are drinking or how many beer cans are in the fridge,” he said.

Also, some teens craft a plan where they get alcohol from friends who work in convenience stores where alcohol is sold or restaurants where it is served, he said. If one friend works at convenience store or restaurant where alcohol is served, a group of friends would go to that store-only during the hours the teen works. The friend would only sell alcohol to friends in their circle and ask for identification from anyone else, Middleton said.

“This is something that’s been going on and on and on,” he said. “Today’s young people are no different than they were 30 years ago.”

Another technique teens use is to pay someone — a friend or stranger — to buy alcohol for them, Loar said.

“They would stop someone on the street and says here’s $20 or $40 and go buy me a bottle of wine and you can keep whatever is left,” he said.

Now that school is in session both Middleton and Loar said they typically see more attempts by teens to get their hands on alcohol because more house parties are taking place.

“During the summer the teens don’t get together too much because they have summer jobs or they are gone on a family vacation or something,” Middleton said.

BY THE NUMBERS

Number of alcohol licenses:

St. Lucie County: 543

Martin County: 439

Indian River County: 347

Okeechobee County: 121

Total alcohol licenses on the Treasure Coast and Okeechobee County: 1,450

Number of citations issued to businesses for selling to underage persons from January 2004 to August 2009: 263

Number of most citations issued to a company, 7-Eleven Inc.: 12

Number of citations issued to 29 Publix stores on the Treasure Coast and Okeechobee County: 0

Source: State Division of Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco

FAST FACTS

Adam Guzi, supervisor of misdemeanor court for the State’s Attorney Office in Martin County:

Minors caught with alcohol are charged with a misdemeanor and entered into the juvenile justice system and given the option to attend substance abuse counseling.

Adults over 18 but under 21 are charged with a misdemeanor and can face up to 60 days in county jail, up to a $500 fine or both. Because the person is an adult they will have a criminal record, Guzi said.

According to Mothers Against Drunk Driving, about 5,000 people a year die from underage drinking.

In 2008, Martin County youths between 12-17 ranked first in the state in admitting alcohol usage, said Tina Levene, program specialist state chapter of MADD.

In July 1984 federal law set 21 as the national minimum legal drinking age, according to MADD. Federal highway construction money were withheld for states that failed to adopt the new law. By 1988, all states had adopted the new drinking age.

A six-member jury took only two hours to find Indian River County Administrator Joe Baird not guilty of DUI late Wednesday afternoon.

Baird, noticeably jubilant, sat with his attorney Bobby Guttridge as the court clerk read the verdict at 3:57 p.m. Baird then hugged his girlfriend and deferred comments to his attorney, before leaving the courthouse. (more…)

VERO BEACH — The DUI trial of County Administrator Joe Baird continues today with more defense witnesses testifying about his physical condition before his arrest at 10:25 p.m. May 16 in Vero Beach.

Baird “appeared perfectly normal to me” around 10 p.m., Baird’s long-time friend John Binkley testified Tuesday at the end of trial testimony for the day.

Testimony is expected to end today, possibly in time for the case to go to jurors for a decision.
(more…)

VERO BEACH — Jury selection begins Monday in the DUI trial of Indian River County Administrator Joe Baird and prosecutors will get to use key evidence the defense wanted excluded.

County Judge David Morgan refused defense attorney Bobby Guttridge’s request Wednesday to toss out the May 16 arrest, which the attorney said was based on an invalid stop. (more…)

FORT PIERCE — A St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office deputy was arrested Sunday on a DUI charge after she reportedly was seen weaving in traffic and stumbling when she exited her sport utility vehicle, according to an affidavit released Monday.

Two breath tests measured 49-year-old Consuela Hall Curtis’s blood-alcohol level as 0.144 and 0.153 percent — greater than the legal limit of 0.08 percent. Curtis is a court security deputy who joined the Sheriff’s Office in 2003, according to the Sheriff’s Office. She was off duty in her personal vehicle at the time.

An off-duty sheriff’s sergeant saw Curtis driving west Sunday afternoon on Okeechobee Road from Interstate 95, noting her GMC SUV was weaving and cutting across all lanes of traffic.
(more…)

STUART — The image of a man’s arm wrapped around her front tire still haunts Jessica Leslie eight years later.

It was November 2001 when a 20-year old Leslie of Boca Raton was coming back from an evening of partying that she decided to drive home drunk. She told her story to a crowd of about four dozen at a Thursday community program at the Martin County Administrative Center on the dangers of drinking and driving.

Leslie never made it home but ran over Patrick McDonough, 41, killing him. (more…)

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Theresa Caputo of Stuart, in black, hugs another woman Wednesday at the scene of a memorial that was built along Cove Road near Stuart. Caputo, a mother of three, said her children all knew and grew up with those killed. (DEBORAH SILVER/Treasure Coast Newspapers)

A few teenagers in board shorts and T-shirts lifted their sunglasses just long enough to wipe away their tears and hug one another in the grass along Cove Road Wednesday afternoon as they stood above a swelling memorial site.

Amid her tears, a mother bent down, reached through the letters, flowers and mementos and clutched a golf ball in her hand.

Angela Coady said she knew one of her son Nick’s friends had put it there intending for it to stay, but when she saw it she decided she had to take it with her.

“The last time I saw him he was going to play golf. He was happy as a lark,” she said. “The next time I saw him, he was dead.”

Nick Coady, 18, and his friends — Christopher Harold Briglio, 18, and Connor William Graver, 16, — were all killed early Tuesday when the Jeep Grand Cherokee that Coady was driving slammed into the back of a John Deere truck and overturned.

(more…)

If there was fun to be had, Nick Coady, Chris Briglio and Connor Graver were likely involved.

They were the ones to call if you wanted to know where the party was or if you were looking for something to do, even on an otherwise boring summer night in Martin County. Once they got everyone to play musical chairs. Often, they were together.

Christopher Briglio

Connor Graver

Nicholas Coady

“Those guys, you couldn’t help but have fun around them. They always lived life to the fullest,” said James Young, 18, a classmate at South Fork High School in Stuart.

So there was laughter mixed in with the tears Tuesday as their former classmates and friends at South Fork gathered near the spot along Cove Road, south of Stuart, where the three lost their lives in what authorities are calling an alcohol-related crash.

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Nick, 18, of Stuart, Chris, 18, of Tequesta, and Connor, 16, of Hobe Sound, died at about 2 a.m. Tuesday after the SUV they were in slammed head-on into a John Deere front-end loader at a construction site at Cove Road and U.S. 1, said Lt. Chris Cribbs of the Florida Highway Patrol.

Chris and Connor, who friends say were “inseparable,” died at the scene. Neither were wearing seat belts, according to the police report. Nick, the driver, died later at St. Mary’s Medical Center in West Palm Beach. He was wearing a seat belt.

Investigators also suspect Nick was speeding. The speed limit on Cove Road is 35 mph.

The driver of the John Deere, Pedro Perez-Espinosa, 25, of Okeechobee wasn’t hurt.

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Nicholas Coady
Christopher Briglio
Connor Graver

Construction crews were widening the road and installing drainage or sewage pipe at that intersection when the SUV, traveling eastbound, approached, Cribbs said. The loader had just dumped some dirt by the roadside and was backing off the road when the SUV struck. It hit the loader’s bucket, flipping the SUV, according to the police report. The crash destroyed the SUV.

There wasn’t much light in the area, he said, but crews said the front-end loader itself was well lit.

The crash closed Cove Road for hours as emergency workers cleared the wreckage.

A woman who answered the door at Nick’s house Tuesday said he was an “angel,” but said the family didn’t want to discuss the crash.

Chris’ grandmother, Helen Nekola, said the Briglios’ family members were gathering in Tequesta to mourn.

“He was a wonderful boy,” Nekola said by phone from Bethpage, N.Y. “We’re just trying to get around this.”

Classmates, who gathered at the site after the wreckage had been cleared, built a makeshift memorial for the trio. They left flowers, a football, a polo shirt and letters. They scrawled messages across a large poster as they might have a yearbook, covering it with signatures by mid-afternoon. And they talked about their friends. (more…)