STUART — Nine years ago, a drunk Donald Flewellen drove a stolen van across the center line, causing a collision that killed two people and left illegal Guatemalan immigrant Luis Jimenez permanently brain damaged.

Less than four months after his December release from prison for two counts of DUI manslaughter, authorities say Flewellen, 52, was behind the wheel of a borrowed car and caused a hit-and-run crash with property damage in Fort Pierce.

Already charged with two counts of violating his supervised release, court papers show when Flewellen returns to court Aug. 17, he’ll face additional charges of leaving the scene of a crash with property damage and driving on a revoked driver’s license related to an April 5 traffic collision.
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MARTIN COUNTY — When Martin Memorial Medical Center hired a jet in 2003 to repatriate a brain-damaged patient to his native Guatemala, hospital officials “never took the law into their own hands,” according to documents filed ahead of a June 23 trial.

“They never stuffed Mr. (Luis Alberto) Jimenez in the back of a van under the cover of darkness and drove him out of town,” Martin Memorial attorney Scott Michaud stated in papers detailing Jimenez’s predawn flight to Guatemala City on July 10, 2003.

“When Martin Memorial discharged Jimenez to the facility in Guatemala,” Michaud noted, “Martin Memorial did so with the honest belief based on the evidence it uncovered, that the hospital in Guatemala was properly equipped to care for him.”
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STUART — A Martin County grand jury on Wednesday returned first-degree murder and robbery indictments against two Stuart residents accused in the April 5 beating death of Keith A. Hall, who died three days after being attacked.

Charged are James Louis LaForteza, 29, and Kobi Anderson, 15, who authorities say beat Hall into unconsciousness to steal $40 he’d shown the man and teen in an attempt to buy drugs. (more…)

PORT ST. LUCIE — Kyle Wahl, 5, Tuesday night lost his battle with medullohblastoma, a type of brain cancer.

Kyle is the son of Chris Wahl, 33, and mother Sasha, 30, of Port St. Lucie, and was featured in Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers by columnist Geoff Oldfather.

Kyle Wahl, 5, break dances during a holiday party in Dec. 2008. Photo by Damien Higgins.