INDIANTOWN — For years, the owners of J&R Outfitters ran a hunting lodge featuring exotic game such as Asian water buffalo, Nilgai antelope and Pere David deer thinking they had all the required Martin County permits.

But several code violations were discovered at J&R Outfitters last fall after the opening of a shooting range that outraged nearby homeowners with incessant gunfire.

Now Bill Richey and Joe O’Bannon are aiming to keep their hunting lodge open by jumping through all the regulatory hoops that apply to their business at 7600 S.W. Fox Brown Road.

“We never dreamed that what we were doing was illegal and we never tried to get away with anything,” said Richey, a former state prosecutor. “We have been no secret in Martin County. We have been here for 20 years.” (more…)

PORT ST. LUCIE — A man was shot after a fight between a teen and a woman ended up with the man’s girlfriend accidentally firing a gun at him, police said.

Port St. Lucie resident Curtis Mock, 19, was taken to Lawnwood Regional Medical Center with serious but not life-threatening injuries.

Nineteen-year-old April Lipko and Alyssa Dolan, 17, were at Dolan’s home in the 1200 block of Southwest Santiago Street when they argued, according to police.

Dolan left her kitchen to retrieve a shotgun, which she then pointed at Lipko and her boyfriend, 18-year-old Christopher Wilson, police said.

Wilson and Lipko left, and once outside Wilson said he’d be calling authorities to report that Dolan had threatened to shoot them, police said.

Mock, Dolan’s boyfriend, swiped the phone from Wilson, which Wilson retrieved when he said he wouldn’t call 911, according to police.

Wilson began to back out of the driveway in his truck and Mock started walking back toward the house when Dolan discharged the gun and shot Mock in his right arm.
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STUART — After one hour of deliberation Thursday afternoon, a Martin County jury found Eric Lashawn Wiley guilty of second-degree murder in the Jan. 11, 2008, shooting death of 19-year-old Levi Dwight Starks in Stuart.

Wiley and his sister’s boyfriend were struggling over a gun after an alleged domestic dispute when the gun discharged and the .40-caliber bullet struck Starks in the chest.

In addition to second-degree murder, Wiley, 39, also was found guilty on aggravated assault and aggravated battery charges, and could face up to life in prison. (more…)

STUART — A trial began this morning in the case of a 39-year-old man accused in the January 2008 shooting death of a 19-year-old church drummer who was a bystander during a fight.

Eric Lashawn Wiley could face life in prison if convicted on murder charges in connection with the death of Levi “Dwight” Starks.

Starks, 19, was a bystander while Wiley fought with another man, Aaron Stoudemire. Starks died shortly after the gun went off and hit him in the chest.

Wiley later called police and turned himself in. He told them he fought with Stoudemire, his sister’s boyfriend, because Stoudemire was beating his sister, who was pregnant at the time.
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STUART — A man accused of using a shotgun to blast his way into a Palm City home about 9 a.m. last Thursday, only to be shot three times himself, is expected to be charged with attempted murder and armed burglary.

Rhonda Irons, Martin County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman, said Monday that investigators are still probing the circumstances under which Christopher Reber, 23, of Stuart, is suspected of shooting his way into the home where Joe Russo and Linda Schultz live.

Schultz, 40, was home alone when Reber blew out the glass doors on the rear of her Lake Village home, reports said. She was slightly injured but grabbed a .40-caliber handgun and fired back at him, hitting him three times.
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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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MARTIN COUNTY — Plans to address zoning and code compliance issues for a western Martin County hunting camp will not include a shooting range at the facility, county planners were told Thursday.

Representatives for J & R Outfitters Inc., which runs J & R Hunting Preserve at 7600 Fox Brown Road near Indiantown, said there are no plans to reopen the gun range that closed at the club in February.

“If a shooting range is ever proposed in the future, that will be the subject of a different site plan,” said Morris Crady of Lucido & Associates land planners. “The shooting range is a concern for several (nearby) property owners, so we’ll have to come back and do this all over again if we decide to have that.”

The hunting preserve leased a portion of its land to South Florida Shooting Sports, which managed a rifle, pistol and skeet shooting range until it voluntarily ceased operations Feb. 3 under fire from adjoining residents and scrutiny of code enforcement officers. (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…)

Florida Department of Law Enforcement officials have identified the man who was shot by a Florida Highway Patrol trooper as 32-year-old Carlos Javier Perez Alonso.

The trooper shot Perez Alonso after he carjacked a Sebastian resident Kerrie Johnson at a Hess gas station on Okeechobee Road in Fort Pierce at about 3 p.m., running over her leg in the process, authorities said.

Perez Alonso then fled to Interstate 95, where Fort Pierce police chased him as he sped north, police said. After crossing into Indian River County, he pulled into the median and ran off on foot.

It was then that the trooper shot him in the stomach area, said Richard Piccininni, lead agent in charge of the FDLE field office in Fort Pierce.

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Deshawn Norwood

Deshawn M. Norwood, 21, was arrested by Sewall’s Point police after the red 1998 Chevy he was riding in was pulled over shortly before 3 a.m. on Sunday.

Police had stopped the four-door car because one of its headlights was out, Sewall’s Point police Chief Eric Cerniglia said. After police noticed that Norwood, who was sitting in the back seat, was making furtive movements, they asked him and the two others in the car to get out, Cerniglia said. In the back, police noticed a loaded AK-47 type assault rifle where Norwood had been, Cerniglia said.

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