SEBASTIAN — Police investigators said they uncovered a criminal enterprise involving ill-gotten prescription drugs, out-of-state pill smuggling and stolen auto parts when they searched a home last weekend.

Investigators spent 30 hours searching an undisclosed home late Friday and most of Saturday, said Sebastian Officer Steve Marcinik, police spokesman. Eight investigators recovered more than 3,000 pills with a street value of $60,000, as well as $6,500 worth of stolen property and $4,500 cash, investigators said.

“This shows a direct link between theft and the illegal prescription drug business,” Marcinik said.
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STUART — Described as a loving father and caring person, Jerome Hutchinson was found early Monday morning face down on the sidewalk leading to his East Stuart residence.

The 24-year-old man had been shot in the chest, the second to die in an exceptionally violent weekend in Stuart. The first was Michael Morrison, 43, found early Saturday morning on his back next to his Jeep at The Crossings at Indian Run Apartments less than four miles away.

Morrison also had been shot in the chest, but police haven’t found a nexus between the two killings, police spokesman Sgt. Marty Jacobson said Monday.
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FORT PIERCE — After Julia Rolon-Estrada died of a gunshot wound to the artery in her leg on July 26, 2006, she was wrapped in a blue tarp and again in a green blanket before being buried in the yard of her Port St. Lucie home, near a rear sliding glass door.

A dog trained to find cadavers helped authorities locate the newly tilled grave, which was covered with a wooden pallet holding 20 mulch bags stacked on top.

Rolon-Estrada’s jailed husband, 43-year-old Albert Estrada, state prosecutors say, is the man guilty of killing his wife and high-school sweatheart, who had walked out on him the night before she died at age 39.
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FORT PIERCE — A 74-year-old man reportedly walked onto the campus of Dan McCarty School Tuesday evening and fatally shot himself near the school’s bus pick-up area.

The 1201 Mississippi Avenue campus was empty of students and faculty when the incident occurred, according to Dave Morris, director of security for St. Lucie County schools. The man’s identity was not immediately released, pending notification of next of kin.
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MIAMI — After a long and exhaustive investigation, the deaths of two infants and the sickening of a third at Miami Children’s Hospital is a medical mystery.

The infants, born extremely prematurely, their immune systems compromised, were in the hospital’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit when two of them died of a common yet lethal bacterium in March. (more…)

DOVER, Del. — The body of a former Port St. Lucie resident killed in Iraq on Sunday was flown here early Tuesday afternoon, where his parents and siblings waited for him.

Army Spc. Michael Anaya, 23, died in Bayji, northwest of Baghdad, when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle.

His parents, Carmelo Sr. and Cheryl, and his older siblings, Carmelo Jr. and Trista Moffett, watched as the flag-draped box carrying his body was saluted and led across the tarmac by an honor guard.

“They did a very professional job. It was like they were handling their own family,” his sister said. “They were wonderful to him and to us.”

After the box was placed in a medical examiner’s van, Moffett and other family members returned to their vehicle and watched through the windows as Michael disappeared from sight.

“We sat until we couldn’t see him anymore,” she said. “We watched the honor guard walk away.

“It still feels so unreal,” she added.

The media was allowed to photograph the transfer of the soldier from the airplane to the van waiting to take him to the medical examiner’s office. (more…)

SEBASTIAN — The woman who kept her mother’s mummified remains in a bedroom of their home for six years told police she never reported the death because she couldn’t afford burial expenses.

According to interview records released Tuesday, Penelope Sharon Jordan had maintained the ruse over the deception of the fate of Timmie Jordan since 2003. The story she gave to a Sebastian officer Monday morning was that her mother, who was born in 1913, was living in Melbourne. However, officers said Penelope Jordan couldn’t provide an address for where her mother was staying.
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SEBASTIAN — Police said they have found the mummified remains of a woman who had been missing for as much as six years in a home where neighbors complained of a foul smell.

Penelope Jordan, 61, of the 500 block of Wimbrow Drive, was charged Monday with fraud and theft by the Sebastian Police Department. Investigators are still looking into the circumstances of the death of Jordan’s mother, Timmie Jordan, who was born in 1913. Police said Penelope Jordan had been cashing her Social Security checks for the past six years.

Code enforcement had been called to the home Friday for complaints of bad odor, poor living conditions and numerous cats, said police spokesman Steve Marcinik.
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St. Lucie County Sheriff’s officials are investigating the death of a man whose body was found beside a canal north of Fort Pierce early this morning.

Someone walking in the area of North 25th Street and Avenue T found the body around 6:15 this morning and called 911, sheriff’s officials said.

Sheriff Ken Mascara said the body is that of a black male in his 40s or 50s, wearing jeans, a shirt and jacket. The body, which was found next to a bicycle, was soaked, suggesting that he had been in the canal. (more…)