INDIAN RIVER COUNTY — School officials said a 14-year-old student broke into Storm Grove Middle School, damaging doors and surfing the Internet for pornography, according to a juvenile arrest affidavit.

Security cameras at the school captured images of the eighth-grade student crawling under a gate to get inside the campus last weekend, a deputy for the Indian River County Sheriff’s Office said. More cameras caught him going into the custodian’s office, where he looked at porn Web sites for an hour, the affidavit said. The student also caused $1,200 damage to an office door, the Sheriff’s Office said. (more…)

PORT ST. LUCIE — A 34-year-old Port St. Lucie man was arrested Friday and charged with six felonies and misdemeanors after kicking officers and chewing a plastic bag with heroin, according to the St. Lucie County arrest affidavit.

Rodney Gener Delphin of the 400 block of Southeast Walter Terrace, was charged with felony trafficking in opium or derivative more than 4 grams, felony tampering with evidence, two counts of felony resisting arrest with violence and two misdemeanors of resisting arrest without violence.
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STUART — An online neighborhood Web site is including the city of Stuart in its top 20 list of best places to retire.

NeighborhoodScout.com ranked the city No. 18 in the nation on a list of 20 cities where people can retire for less than $150,000.

The rankings were posted on the popular Web search engine AOL.com.

Corpus Christi, Texas is No. 1 on the list.
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FORT PIERCE — The juvenile violent crime rate dropped by nearly 30 percent so far this year, Fort Pierce police said Tuesday.

Police attributed the decrease to some initiatives run by officers. The numbers also included a 17 percent drop in overall youth crime. (more…)

SEBASTIAN — City Council candidate Joseph Scozzari is trying to avoid any last-minute surprises by explaining why, 31 years ago, he became a convicted felon.

Scozzari said he was a 17-year-old single father who owned and operated pony rides in New York. He and a group of four others decided to take nine saddles from a vacant barn. The saddles belonged to some judges and attorneys and the young Scozzari and the others ended up arrested.

Scozzari said the others could afford lawyers, but he had a public defender who told me he was facing some time in prison if convicted of burglary.
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MARTIN COUNTY — A nude man covered in feces broke into someone’s backyard and jumped into the pool Saturday, according to a Martin County Sheriff’s Office report.

Robert Stark Higgins, 21, of the 5300 block of Southeast Dell Street, Stuart, was charged with burglary to an occupied dwelling, disorderly conduct and misdemeanor theft. He was being held at the Martin County Jail in lieu of $10,500 bail.
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A driver who died in August along with his two friends in a high-speed crash south of Stuart had a blood alcohol content three times higher than the legal limit, authorities said this morning.

Nick Coady, 18, of Stuart had a blood alcohol content of .251 percent when he drove a speeding 1998 Jeep Grand Cherokee head-on into a front-end loader on Cove Road about 2 a.m. on Aug. 4, killing himself and passengers Christopher Briglio, 18, of Tequesta and Connor Graver, 16, of Hobe Sound, according to a Florida Highway Patrol statement.

Briglio’s blood alcohol content was .129 percent, or one-and-a-half times the legal limit. Graver’s blood alcohol content was .152 percent, or nearly twice the legal limit. He also tested positive for marijuana use, the statement said. (more…)

STUART — Authorities are looking for a man who stole more than $6,000 in cash and checks from a convenience store Friday.

Employees at the Stuckey Shell station in the 8000 block of Southwest Jack James Drive, Stuart, called deputies about 11 a.m. Friday after the theft. An employee said she had been counting cash and preparing to load an ATM machine when she left a rear office at the store for a few minutes. When she returned, a plastic bag with the cash was missing, according to the incident report.
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PORT ST. LUCIE — The International Union of Police Associations, which represents the city’s police officers, put a sign on a billboard Sunday at U.S. 1 and Jennings Road to protest the city sending layoff notices to eight police officers.

The notices advised the officers their last day of employment would be Sept. 30.

One side of the billboard reads, “Welcome to Port St. Lucie! Violent crime is up 14.4 percent! Feel safe???”

The other side breaks down what the city spent on the civic center and plans to spend to bring a private digital production studio to the city. It also cites a figure, $1.5 million, as the annual upkeep of the botanical garden project.
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FORT PIERCE — Shelitta Woods calls the past six months “miserable.”

“You got to understand, it’d been like 13, 14 years before I had another child,” Woods said. “It was just me and Lil’ Bo, just me and Lil’ Bo, everywhere I go, me and Lil’ Bo.”

Woods’ 16-year-old son, Torenda “Lil’ Bo” Youngblood Jr., was fatally shot at his bus stop March 9, two days after Demetrius Wells, 18, sustained fatal wounds in a drive-by shooting. Two men also were hit by gunfire during separate shootings between the homicides. (more…)