ST. LUCIE COUNTY — Dog owners could find a new place to take their pets if County Commissioners allow dogs to roam Wildcat Cove.

The measure would let dog owners allow their pets to roam without leashes in the area so long as the owner is in control of the dog.

Wildcat Cove is located at 3399 North A1A in North Hutchinson Island just west of Pepper Park. The area has a riverside view.

Commissioners are expected to set a date for a public hearing at Tuesday’s meeting. The meeting is at 6 p.m. at 2300 Virginia Ave. in Fort Pierce, and the public hearing is expected to be in early October. If passed then, the space could be used as of Nov. 1.
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TREASURE COAST — The number of Treasure Coast medical equipment suppliers for Blue Cross/Blue Shield patients will dwindle to three starting Nov. 1.

The cutbacks follow a competitive bidding process by regional suppliers who provide products from diabetes testing strips to oxygen machines statewide to remain in the Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Florida network.

Liberty Medical Supply and Physician’s Choice Respiratory Services, Inc., both in Port St. Lucie, and Rotech Oxygen & Medical Equipment in Stuart remain as the lone Treasure Coast suppliers after the bidding, according to a Blue Cross/Blue Shield list sent to Oxygen Plus in Vero Beach.
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FORT PIERCE — About 6 p.m. Tuesday, the U.S. Marshall Fugitive Task Force arrested David Jerome Brown, 48, of the 500 block of North 27th Street in connection with a Monday night attack on a woman and shooting of her son.

Brown was apprehended at the corner of North 27th Street and Avenue G without incident, said Fort Pierce Detective Ben Thayer.

The male victim was shot in the genitals and his mother pistol whipped Monday night in a suspected domestic-related incident before the attacker fled in a pickup truck, according to a police report released Tuesday and a sergeant.
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Theresa Caputo of Stuart, in black, hugs another woman Wednesday at the scene of a memorial that was built along Cove Road near Stuart. Caputo, a mother of three, said her children all knew and grew up with those killed. (DEBORAH SILVER/Treasure Coast Newspapers)

A few teenagers in board shorts and T-shirts lifted their sunglasses just long enough to wipe away their tears and hug one another in the grass along Cove Road Wednesday afternoon as they stood above a swelling memorial site.

Amid her tears, a mother bent down, reached through the letters, flowers and mementos and clutched a golf ball in her hand.

Angela Coady said she knew one of her son Nick’s friends had put it there intending for it to stay, but when she saw it she decided she had to take it with her.

“The last time I saw him he was going to play golf. He was happy as a lark,” she said. “The next time I saw him, he was dead.”

Nick Coady, 18, and his friends — Christopher Harold Briglio, 18, and Connor William Graver, 16, — were all killed early Tuesday when the Jeep Grand Cherokee that Coady was driving slammed into the back of a John Deere truck and overturned.

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PORT ST. LUCIE — The drivers of two tractor-trailers were taken to a local hospital with minor injuries following a Monday night crash on Florida’s Turnpike, a St. Lucie County Fire District spokeswoman said Tuesday.

Fire District crews were called about 10:45 p.m. Monday to the incident, which occurred about a mile north of Becker Road on the northbound side, Fire District spokeswoman Catherine Chaney said.
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STUART — More than a century ago, shipwrecked sailors who washed up on the Treasure Coast immediately looked for mile markers nailed to trees and posts to direct them to safety.

These markers were designed to be easily understood by men from every country and education level. Over time they were lost to history, but replicas are currently on display at the House of Refuge at Gilbert’s Bar. (more…)

FORT PIERCE — A Georgia man accused of walking naked along a beach about 100 yards from two children and their parents faces an exposure charge, according to a recently released arrest affidavit.

Kevin Francis Gallagher, 61, reportedly was spotted Tuesday afternoon by a St. Lucie County Sheriff’s deputy in a patrol boat. He also had a gun in a bag.

The deputy sighted Gallagher, of Snellville, Ga., about 100 yards north of where two children and their parents were swimming. The incident occurred in the 5500 block of South Ocean Drive.

“There was also a couple that told me they were walking down the beach towards the suspect and had to turn around and walk the opposite direction because the suspect was standing at the water edge,” the affidavit states.

Arrested on a misdemeanor charge of exposure of sexual organs, Gallagher was handcuffed and a gun was found in his carry bag.

The affidavit does not specify why Gallagher, listed as unemployed, was walking naked.

By Will Greenlee, TCPalm.com

FORT PIERCE — A 14-year-old boy who police say fled from officers, brandished a gun and barricaded himself inside a home Monday afternoon surrendered after a few hours, officials said.

Patrick Casimir of 1105 North 29th Street was arrested just before 5 p.m. after he walked out of the house in the 3000 block of Avenue L with his hands raised, according to Sgt. Dennis McWilliams. No one was injured, and no shots were fired.

Casimir was charged with aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer, armed burglary and two counts of resisting arrest without violence, officials said.
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New Medicare payment rules are starting to strangle local small oxygen suppliers by forcing them to turn away business.

In the process, patients who live here part-time, travel, move or want to switch suppliers locally are left struggling to find new options for oxygen.

“This is going to dramatically affect patients’ lifestyles, how they move and their freedom,” said Mark Hassett, general manager of Stuart-based OxyPros Inc., which also has a Port St. Lucie office “Patients need to speak up.”

In the new rules for 2009, Medicare pays suppliers about $164 monthly for three years for patients renting respiratory equipment. In the following two years, suppliers continue providing oxygen and services, but only receive negligible reimbursement. After the fifth year, the payment cycle begins again and patients are entitled to new equipment.

Now, it’s become a losing proposition, suppliers said, to take a patient who has been on oxygen even for a year or two, because two years of providing essentially free oxygen and services follow.

And close to three full years is necessary to cover the costs of the impending two-year period with little reimbursement, said Kathie Rovella of Oxygen Plus in Vero Beach.

So suppliers are often forced to reject patients who are a few years into their oxygen use. Oxygen Plus has turned away 12-15 patients this year because of the new billing cycle, including two in the last week, Rovella said.

Because much of Florida’s population doesn’t live in the state year-round that can make it difficult because patients have to find a supplier in two locations. And patients a few years into the cycle who move are often left confused and without coverage.

Travel cane be even more difficult.

Patients either have to lug their equipment around with them, or search diligently for willing suppliers wherever they are going, Rovella said.

The rule is part of a large-scale effort to cut Medicare costs and eliminate fraud in the oxygen industry, which long lacked sufficient regulation, said Zane Morgan, a manufacturers representative for several Florida oxygen suppliers.

Dorothy McGrath is approaching four years using oxygen. She decided that carrying her 30-pound concentrator to Kentucky to see her daughter last month was unreasonable.

So McGrath, of Hobe Sound, rented from a local supplier, and was handed a $150 bill, which OxyPros luckily paid for her.

Because McGrath was in the middle of her third year, the Kentucky supplier wouldn’t accept her Medicare.

“You’re really bound to your house, and that’s not fair,” said McGrath, 63.

Patients like McGrath, who travel, move across the state, live seasonally up North, or look to move closer to family simply are getting turned away, Hassett said.

Meanwhile, the loss in customers and reimbursement could be debilitating for small suppliers in the long run.

Medicare reimbursement hardly accounts for labor costs, like providing 24/7 on-call services, and equipment set-up, maintenance and refills, which in reality are the prime expenses for suppliers, Hassett said.

OxyPros and Oxygen Plus have both added smaller health-care items to their inventories to help make up for profit losses. And OxyPros is in a hiring freeze, while Oxygen Plus staff members have taken pay cuts.

But neither company is confident small suppliers will be able to continue the same services without a large-scale change.

“Oxygen Plus is a mom-and-pop store,” Rovella said. “And trust me, we won’t be able to sustain this much longer.”

In the end, however, it’s the patients like those who come in for portable oxygen so they can move and be active who suffer — and who become confined to one area in an effort to be mobile.

“They’re not thinking about the person’s life,” McGrath said. “It’s important when you’re disabled to be near your friends and family.

“Everybody has to breathe.”

OXYGEN BREAKDOWN

In years one to three, suppliers receive an average of $200 per month – 80 percent from Medicare, and a 20 percent copay from the patient or secondary insurer – for renting, installing and maintaining rented oxygen equipment

In years four and five, Medicare offers minimal reimbursement to oxygen suppliers, who are required to continue offering the same equipment and services

After five years, the payment cycle restarts, and patients are entitled to new equipment

By Jonathan Mattise, TCPalm.com

A Fort Pierce woman that was arrested and charged with numerous counts of animal cruelty may have stabbed one of her dead dogs.

St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Deputies found a sick home full of animals, some dead and starving, with an odor of death reeking from it when they arrived on the scene Monday.

Deputies arrived at the home on North Kings Highway after the landlord of the home noticed a foul smell coming from it. The landlord also said he hadn’t seen his tenant, Michele Nunziata, in several days.

Deputies on scene said they were met with “an overwhelming foul odor of decomposition.” They also said they could hear several dogs barking from inside the home.

As deputies tried to get Nunziata to come back to the home and allow them inside, she repeatedly told deputies over the phone that she was “too busy.” When she did arrive home and let deputies inside she admitted to burying dogs in her front yard, though deputies could not find grave sites.

When Animal Control Officers arrived they took inventory of the home and found:

3 very slim Pit Bulls

A Blood Hound suffering from malnutrition

2 Cockatiels without food or water

2 ferrets without food or water

1 Black Wolf and 1 Doberman Pincher locked in a kennel laying in feces with no food or water, suffering from malnutrition

3 dead dogs locked in a kennel, decaying

Deputies and Animal Control Officers also found rabbits caged without food or water and a goose.

Nunziata has been charged with 6 felony accounts of animal cruelty as well as 11 Misdemeanors.

In a follow-up report, Animal Care and Control Officers say it appeared one of the deceased dogs left to rot in a cage had been stabbed in it’s armpit.

Officers said it appeared that most of the dead animals died of neglect.

Nunziata told officers she never neglected her animals and “would get them all back.”

Marianne Wellendorf
WPEC Channel 12