PORT ST. LUCIE — A teen girl was struck by a pick-up truck Monday morning while she was at her bus stop, though the girl’s injuries were very minor, a St. Lucie County Fire District spokeswoman said.

The girl was at Northwest Bayshore Boulevard and Northwest Rainbow Street, Fire District spokeswoman Catherine Chaney said. Fire district crews responded just before 6:30 a.m., but were called off.

Nick Perslin, 37, said his 17-year-old son was driving the Toyota pick-up. Perslin said his son was on his way to pick up a friend to go to St. Lucie West Centennial High School at the time.
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MARTIN COUNTY — Dorothy McManus got her own personal chauffeured bus from Halpatiokee Regional Park to West Palm Beach to start her work week Monday.

The Stuart resident, who takes a train from West Palm Beach to work in Broward County, had the bus to herself on the inaugural 5:10 a.m. Palm Tran Commuter Express. McManus was the first rider on the area’s first mass transit service offered between Martin and Palm Beach counties on Monday.

Four people hopped on the bus for the service’s 6:10 a.m. departure to Palm Beach County.
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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…)

VERO BEACH — Officials said they’re still investigating the cause of death of a Hialeah man found Saturday in the pool at a resort hotel owned by pop star Gloria Estefan and her husband, Emilio.

Enrique Perez, 69, was vacationing with family at Costa D’Este in the 3200 block of Ocean Drive, police spokesman Officer John Morrison said.

About 2 p.m. Saturday, Kelly Wakeman, 24, of Tallahassee said she was sitting at the side of the pool when she and others noticed Perez submerged, face down and not moving in the 6-feet, 6-inch depth area of the pool.
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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.
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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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PORT ST. LUCIE — A woman was taken to a local trauma center in serious condition Monday after a crash on Savanna Club Boulevard east of U.S. 1, a St. Lucie County Fire District spokeswoman said.

Fire district crews were called about 6 a.m. to the incident in the 1800 block of Savanna Club Boulevard and took a woman in her 20s to a local trauma center in serious condition, Fire District spokeswoman Catherine Chaney said.

The woman had been driving a 4-door Volkswagen at the time of the incident. No one else was in the vehicle at the time.

Details on how the crash occurred were not immediately available.

By Will Greenlee

FORT PIERCE — A woman was arrested after a tip to sheriff’s investigators that she was “forcing” her unlicensed 17-year-old daughter to drive her to buy drugs, according to a recently released affidavit.

A sheriff’s deputy who got behind the vehicle, a tan Ford van, on Wednesday as it traveled along U.S. 1, said he spied a clear plastic bag being thrown from the passenger window. (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…)

STUART — Three people were attacked by a swarm of bees on Monday that came from a hive about the size of a car engine.

“I have never experienced anything like this before in my life,” said Kendall Todd, owner of Affordable Pressure Cleaning in Palm City.

Todd and his brother were pressure cleaning Becky Engebretsen’s driveway in the 1800 block of Northwest River Point Drive, when they first started noticing some bees. After spraying the bees with water, more continued to show up until finally they were forced to take off on foot.
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