FORT PIERCE — Raybin J. Williams said he had to do what he had to do for gas money to make it back home.

That, police said, apparently included robbing a Waffle House with another man Monday and taking a couple of shots at someone who fired at him.

In the end, Williams, 24, and 22-year-old Corey Cooper, were arrested following the 3:10 a.m. stick-up of the Okeechobee Road eatery, according to records and a police spokeswoman.
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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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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…)

STUART — Even though Martin County detective Sgt. Bill McCaw grew up on the South Side of Chicago and lived amid gang violence, he didn’t have the slightest clue it existed when he was a child.

Few people did.

Heading the gang intelligence unit, the 20-year Martin County Sheriff’s Office veteran spoke to residents Wednesday evening to try to make sure that gang growth doesn’t go similarly undetected in Martin County.

The event at the Martin County Administration Building sponsored by Project Northland occurred two days after 16-year-old Torenda Youngblood Jr. was shot and killed at his Fort Pierce bus stop, the most recent of four shootings since Saturday.

At least two were “directly related to gang violence,” said Fort Pierce Chief of Police Sean Baldwin.

McCaw sees gang violence as a problem that continues to seep into the county.
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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…)

PORT ST. LUCIE — State health officials suspect a Port St. Lucie child’s death this month was from the flu virus.

However, the cause of death can not be confirmed until St. Lucie County Health Department officials receive an autopsy report from the Medical Examiner’s Office, said Arlease Hall, St. Lucie County Health Department spokeswoman.

On Wednesday, Florida Today reported the flu virus arrived late in state and had claimed the life of a Port St. Lucie child, bringing the nation’s total pediatric deaths to five for this flu season.

Although the flu is not a reportable disease, the state monitors its activity through sentinel physicians and the reports of emergency room physicians, according to Florida Today. (more…)

A fox suspected of having rabies reportedly bit a 58-year-old woman on her hand and leg Tuesday night after the animal ran in her house, according to officials and a St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office report released Wednesday.

The fox, described as gray and the size of a house cat, reportedly also bit a neighbor and attacked the car of his 17-year-old daughter before the daughter ran over the fox. The incident happened in the 10000 block of Bluefield Road in the western portion of the county, and the 58-year-old woman said she “somehow” got the fox out of her home.

James Moses, environmental administrator for the St. Lucie County Health Department, said the fox was recovered and is being tested at a state laboratory in Lantana to determine whether it has rabies. He suspects the fox had rabies “based on the description of the animal’s actions.”

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The Baehrs — Derek, Kellyanne and their two young daughters are five months behind on their mortgage payments. They sometimes eat at a soup kitchen and shop at a food pantry. They expect to lose their three-bedroom suburban house before the end of the school year.
“This is just awful, and I know that we are not the only ones going through this,’’ says Kellyanne, 37, an accounting clerk. Derek, 40, is disabled. “We used to try to go day by day. Now we are just trying to get to the end of each day.’’

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WEST PALM BEACH — The Escobedo family didn’t last six months in south Florida.

Instead, Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Carlton said, the family of four met their deaths in a violent, execution-style killing October 13, 2006 at the hands of two men, Ricardo Sanchez, Jr. and Daniel Troya.

See more in the Palm Beach Post here

In opening arguments in the federal death penalty trial of Sanchez and Troya, together with the drug conspiracy trials for Danny Varela and Liana Lee Lopez, Carlton boiled down all the crimes to a single word - drugs. (more…)

Opening arguments are expected to begin today in the federal death penalty trial surrounding the 2006 slayings of a young Greenacres family of four along Florida’s Turnpike.

A panel of seven men and five women was picked Monday to decide the drug conspiracy case against Danny Varela, Liana Lee Lopez, Ricardo Sanchez and Daniel Troya. Jurors could impose death sentences against Sanchez and Troya, who are charged in the killings of the Escobedo family. (more…)