PORT CANAVERAL — Martha Jackson was watching a wedding video with her nephew when she heard the splash.

Soon after, the Nashville, Tenn., woman heard a man yelling.

“You could hear him hollering for help,” said Jackson, who was on the last night of a four-night cruise to the Bahamas.

Authorities have not released the name of the 34-year-old Philadelphia man who jumped from his sixth-deck suite aboard the Carnival Sensation late Wednesday. The man, who was on the cruise celebrating his wedding anniversary, was rescued 1 1/2 hours later by the Disney cruise ship Wonder off the coast of southern St. Lucie County. (more…)

ST. LUCIE COUNTY — St. Lucie County Health Department officials confirmed Thursday the county’s first death from H1N1 flu, commonly called the swine flu.

Jason Christopher Schenck, 23, of Port St. Lucie, died Tuesday at St. Lucie Medical Center from the H1N1 virus, his family said.

“He had more friends than I knew he had, and he was just a good kid. He was a good all around kid. He was very polite,” father Clifford Schenck said. “They’re (Jason’s friends) calling me and telling me that Jason was the only one they could talk to and they know he would listen.”

Schenck suffered from asthma his entire life, Clifford Schenck said. And that condition along with several bouts of pneumonia left scars on the young man’s lungs and made him susceptible to the virus, his father said.

Clifford Schenck said his son, who had been in the hospital since Aug. 15, became ill after attending a concert with friends in West Palm Beach. None of his friends have reported feeling sick, his father said.

“When we took him in on the 15th, when he got admitted, his fingers were turning purple and his toes from lack of oxygen,” Clifford Schenck said. “I don’t care if you’re 23 or 70 years old, you don’t need to go out with this because it eats you up.”

The public shouldn’t panic with the county’s first death from the swine flu but practice good hygiene skills, said Arlease Hall, St. Lucie County Health Department spokeswoman.

“It’s imperative that if you sneeze or cough, to do so in your sleeve and not in your hands,” she said. “Wash your hands, and if you are sick, please, just stay home.”

Known as swine flu, H1N1 is a unique strain of the influenza virus that emerged this spring first in Mexico and now is widespread throughout the United States.

“I can tell you, if someone has flu symptoms, it is almost certainly H1N1,” said Karlette Peck, epidemiologist for the St. Lucie County Health Department.

Symptoms include fever, chills, aches, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and fatigue.

People most at-risk: pregnant women, infants and children and those with chronic health conditions, including morbid obesity.

People born before 1957 seem to have some immunity to the H1N1 strain.

Like any flu virus, H1N1 is spread person-to-person through droplets.

Staff writer Hillary Copsey and WPTV contributed to this report.

By Keona Gardner, TCPalm.com

Esther A. Guzman, a scientist at Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute in Fort Pierce, has received a $375,000 grant for a three-year project to find marine organisms that might help prevent pancreatic cancer.

The 36-year-old Guzman grew up in Mexico City and earned a doctorate in immunology from the University of Texas’ M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston in 2004. She joined the drug discovery program at Harbor Branch, a division of Florida Atlantic University, the following year. (more…)

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…)

VERO BEACH — Indian River County Administrator Joe Baird was charged with driving under the influence Saturday night.

“I would like to apologize to the public and (Indian River County) commissioners and I will continue to work hard for the county,” Baird said Sunday. “This is a personal matter and I plan to handle it personally.” (more…)

MARTIN COUNTY — Former Martin County Commissioner John William Holt Jr., who helped create the original Martin County Comprehensive Land Use Plan, died Monday at Treasure Coast Hospice. He was 79.

“He had been ill for some time,” said his wife of 57 years, Evelyn. “His heart just gave out.”

Born in Pahokee, Dec. 15, 1929, the son of John W. Holt Sr. and his wife, Hosea, Holt grew up on a ranch in western Martin County. His brother was former Martin County Sheriff Jim Holt. Like his father and brother, Holt was a rancher.
(more…)

VIERA — For five years, the Palm Bay couple considered Gary Sebastian, the father of their 14-year-old daughter’s best friend, a close acquaintance, trusted to protect their child during the girls’ weekend sleepovers or to hang out at their home during get-togethers.

So, they were stunned when they discovered last summer that 41-year-old Sebastian had been sending their daughter inappropriate text messages, mailed her a package filled with sex-related items and provided her with alcohol on at least one occasion.

And they weren’t satisfied Wednesday when a judge sentenced the former Palm Bay firefighter to three and a half years in prison and five years of sex offender probation. (more…)

Timothy McVeigh, who killed 168 people in the Oklahoma City bombing

A jury has sentenced Ricardo Sanchez Jr. and Daniel Troya to death for killing the Escobedo family of four along Florida’s Turnpike in St. Lucie County.

The federal death penalty is different from the state of Florida’s death sentence in many ways.

Only 51 inmates are on federal Death Row in Terre Haute, Ind. Florida houses 392. Crimes punishable by the federal death penalty include genocide, killing witnesses, in a trial, terrorism and murder committed as part of a drug enterprise.

Florida has executed 67 men and women since the death penalty was reinstated by the Supreme Court in 1976. The feds have executed three men since Congress reinstated it in 1988. Some of the more famous of those executed were Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, convicted of sabotage for selling atomic secrets to the Soviet Union.

Here’s some of those executed since 1927:

James Horace Alderman

1927: James Horace Alderman, known as “King of the Rumrunners,” was intercepted by a Coast Guard vessel 30 miles off Florida’s coast. His boat was laden with alcohol during the era of Prohibition. As Alderman boarded the vessel, he pulled out his pistol. When two Coast Guardsmen and a Secret Service agent rushed him, he shot them all dead. Later, his execution was scheduled for the Broward County Jail, but the county wanted it to occur on federal property. So a makeshift gallows was erected at the Coast Guard hangar.

“When this is read I will have passed over the brink of eternity into the Great Beyond. “I would like to state through the medium of The Miami Herald that I am feeling fine, physically, mentally and spiritually. With the wonderful comfort and strength that I received from Jesus Christ, I am assured that when tomorrow comes I will go with smiles of comfort on my face. … “As I sit here in my cell I can look back and see just what caused me to be where I am today. Drunkenness first starts a young man to gambling — and swearing grows on him — and from that step he becomes hardened in his heart in envy and hatred toward mankind. Then, as he grows up, he becomes what you would call educated to crime. Bootlegging and smuggling is the next step. And there are other angles of downfall that lead to the devil. “The money I made neither did me nor my dear family any good. We thought it did, but no. You can see what it has done — a death sentence by hanging — and a broken-hearted family.”

Read the 1929 Time magazine account of his hanging, here. (more…)

Posters of professional athletes line the walls of Demeterius Wells’ bedroom.

His bulky textbooks from Indian River State College are stacked near his computer, and a bookshelf displays his Vero Beach High School diploma next to trophies he won on the track and field team.

His grandmother Patricia Chambers, who raised him after his mother died from ovarian cancer complications when he was 8, broke down in tears Sunday after describing the untimely death of her 18-year-old grandson early Saturday morning.

The Fort Pierce Police Department said Wells was shot several times on the 1300 block of North 31st Street in Fort Pierce at about 1:50 a.m. Saturday. Family members said he was dropping off a friend when the shooting occurred. (more…)

VERO BEACH — A man who secretly buried his mother in their back yard to cover up her death will be serving 20 years in state prison for second-degree murder, court files show.

In mid-2008, Vero Lake Estates resident Kelly Smith, 38, argued with his mother, Lynn Schuler, 59, over his unemployment. (more…)