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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STUART — A Martin County jury this morning sided with a local hospital in a closely watched lawsuit surrounding the private deportation of a brain-damaged Guatemalan patient.

Martin Memorial Hospital officials in 2003 sent Luis Alberto Jimenez, an illegal immigrant, on a chartered flight back to Guatemala after he had run up more than $1.5 million in medical bills in a case that garnered national attention.

Attorneys for Jimenez’s guardian, Montejo Gaspar, had asked the jury to find that Martin Menorial acted unreasonable in deporting Jimenez and asked for more than $1 million for his care in Guatemala and punitive damages on top of that.

The jury rejected their arguments in a verdict returned early this morning, ending about nine hours of deliberations that began Thursday afternoon.

“We are obviously pleased with the jury’s decision. We have maintained all along that we acted correctly and, most importantly, in the best interests of Mr. Jimenez,” Martin Memorial President and CEO Mark Robitaille said in an emailed statement this morning.

Jurors late Friday had requested to hear for a second time the videotaped deposition from former hospital CEO Dick Harman. In it, Harman said he approved Jimenez’s transfer because he thought Gaspar’s attorneys had exhausted their appeals to a judge’s ruling allowing the deportation.

Montejo Gaspar, left, the former guardian of Luis Jimenez, Thursday at the Martin County Courthouse. Sarah Grile/The Post