MARTIN COUNTY — The Martin County Parks and Recreation Department is launching a new environmentally focused outdoor recreation program for all ages.

Veteran photographer, Kevin Boldenow is leading the newest eco-style adventure throughout Martin County’s most beautiful landscapes. The “eco photo tours” will be a serious of photography instruction at different locations throughout Martin County for both novice and experienced photographers, county officials said in a news release. (more…)

Note to teens facing a potential prison term: don’t use your MySpace page to post photos of police officers and wish “AIDS and genocide to all law enforcement.”

That’s what Stuart resident Jesse Alan Walker, 19, did while awaiting a June trial in which a jury convicted him of robbery with a firearm related to a 2008 home invasion armed robbery. At trial, he was accused of planning the robbery with two then-20-year-old co-defendants, who once played football for Jensen Beach High School.

“I hate the (expletive) police,” Walker posted on MySpace last December, along with photos of Stuart Police officers and derogatory comments.
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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 — A man found naked in the room of a 12-year-old girl with whom he communicated on MySpace and discussed having sex faces two felony charges, according to recently released arrest and court records.

The victim told police she spent most of a day in late June communicating with a man identified as Barrington Benjimen Smith Jr., 18, of the 500 block of Northwest Avon Avenue in Port St. Lucie.

They arranged to meet, she told police. The victim opened her bedroom window and let Smith in about 12:30 a.m. June 25, records state.
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John Christopher Woods is hoping his photos and additional information about his birth parents he has been able to extract from the Florida Department of Children and Families will trigger memories in someone on the Treasure Coast, maybe even his mother or siblings.

Woods, born Jan. 16, 1961, at Martin Memorial Hospital, said he feels he is creeping closer to identifying and perhaps meeting his birth mother, but her name and location are still elusive. His mother was 24 when she gave birth to him and then gave him up for adoption. (more…)

It’s common to see Treasure Coast teens and preteens using cell phones for sending text messages and photos.

But it’s also becoming common for teens nationwide to send other things via their phones or computer Web cameras, including explicit and sexual photographs that have given the phenomenon a new name — sexting.

“It’s been going on for several years here. We just didn’t call it this,” said Detective Brian Broughton of the Martin County Sheriff’s Office. “Now it has a little buzz word, but basically we’re referring to the same thing — when children would take nude pictures of themselves and send it to other children.”
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FORT PIERCE — A day after Navy SEAL sharpshooters killed three Somali pirates and freed an American ship captain, officials at the National Navy UDT-SEAL Museum in Fort Pierce were already trying to collect mementos from the historic event.

“We’re starting to get to work on seeing what we can get,” said Michael Howard, the museum director and a former SEAL. “It would be a shame to let this event pass without saving something at the museum.”
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PORT ST. LUCIE — The Nelsons moved to Connecticut and had two additional children. Neil Spector got married and still lives in the area and Howard Hillegas has watched homes sprout up along his once-vacant street.

Their lives — like those of others who experienced that chaotic day — moved on in the decade since wildfires ripped through parts of western Port St. Lucie on April 15, 1999. It was described then as the worst disaster in city history, and one of the worst fires on the Treasure Coast.

But the memories remain.
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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…)

PORT ST. LUCIE — Former President Jimmy Carter cruised the St. Lucie River, mingled with friends and family at the local Club Med resort and helped raise more than $800,000 on Saturday to support the Carter Center.

Carter, his wife, Rosalynn, and some of his children and grandchildren were in town this past weekend for the annual “Winter Weekend,” an event for supporters of the non-profit, Atlanta-based Carter Center, which promotes peace and health worldwide. (more…)