ST. LUCIE COUNTY — St. Lucie County Health Department officials confirmed Thursday the county’s first death from H1N1 flu, commonly called the swine flu.

Jason Christopher Schenck, 23, of Port St. Lucie, died Tuesday at St. Lucie Medical Center from the H1N1 virus, his family said.

“He had more friends than I knew he had, and he was just a good kid. He was a good all around kid. He was very polite,” father Clifford Schenck said. “They’re (Jason’s friends) calling me and telling me that Jason was the only one they could talk to and they know he would listen.”

Schenck suffered from asthma his entire life, Clifford Schenck said. And that condition along with several bouts of pneumonia left scars on the young man’s lungs and made him susceptible to the virus, his father said.

Clifford Schenck said his son, who had been in the hospital since Aug. 15, became ill after attending a concert with friends in West Palm Beach. None of his friends have reported feeling sick, his father said.

“When we took him in on the 15th, when he got admitted, his fingers were turning purple and his toes from lack of oxygen,” Clifford Schenck said. “I don’t care if you’re 23 or 70 years old, you don’t need to go out with this because it eats you up.”

The public shouldn’t panic with the county’s first death from the swine flu but practice good hygiene skills, said Arlease Hall, St. Lucie County Health Department spokeswoman.

“It’s imperative that if you sneeze or cough, to do so in your sleeve and not in your hands,” she said. “Wash your hands, and if you are sick, please, just stay home.”

Known as swine flu, H1N1 is a unique strain of the influenza virus that emerged this spring first in Mexico and now is widespread throughout the United States.

“I can tell you, if someone has flu symptoms, it is almost certainly H1N1,” said Karlette Peck, epidemiologist for the St. Lucie County Health Department.

Symptoms include fever, chills, aches, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and fatigue.

People most at-risk: pregnant women, infants and children and those with chronic health conditions, including morbid obesity.

People born before 1957 seem to have some immunity to the H1N1 strain.

Like any flu virus, H1N1 is spread person-to-person through droplets.

Staff writer Hillary Copsey and WPTV contributed to this report.

By Keona Gardner, TCPalm.com

ROCKLEDGE — Hooked to a multitude of chest tubes and hospital monitors, Tiphani Corley uses hand signals from her bed that give her mother some sign of hope.

The 19-year-old Rockledge High graduate has been given barely a 50 percent chance of survival since being diagnosed in July with having a strain of H1N1 — the swine flu. (more…)

STUART — Stuart Police arrested a man Friday accused of intentionally leaving a woman’s dog locked in a hot car until it died, according to an affidavit released Monday.

Christopher Alan Gunkel, 55, of the 2000 block of Northeast Pinetree Way, was charged with animal cruelty.

The affidavit says Gunkel left the dog in the car with the windows rolled up at an unspecified time Thursday while picking up a prescription near the 600 block of Colorado Avenue.

Gunkel felt too sick to drive home, however, and called a neighbor to give him a ride to his house, the affidavit says. The dog remained in the vehicle until police discovered it dead in the back seat at approximately 10:30 p.m. Friday.

When police questioned Gunkel about leaving the dog in the car, he stated the dog was “sick to begin with,” according to the affidavit.

Gunkel was being held Monday in the Martin County Jail in lieu of $2,500 bond.

TCPalm staff

When the Martin County Commission fired Duncan Ballantyne from his $147,250 a year job as county administrator on St. Patrick’s Day, a pot of gold awaited the seasoned bureaucrat.

For starters, Ballantyne remained on the county payroll for a month after he cleaned out his office because he was entitled to a 30-day notice of his termination.

Since his official last day on April 23, Ballantyne has collected a total of $84,451 as a result of the severance package he negotiated when he was hired in the fall of 2005, county records show. And his initial severance period doesn’t end until Aug. 23.

Ballantyne’s severance package is not unusual for local government managers and attorneys on the Treasure Coast. In fact, 13 local government managers and attorneys in Martin, St. Lucie and Indian River counties are entitled to severance pay for six months, or longer, if they are fired without cause. (more…)

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

Michele Nunziata

So on Monday night, Michele Nunziata’s landlord called the St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office and reported his concerns.

When investigators showed up at the home in the 900 block of North Kings Highway, they found a grim scene.

Three dead dogs locked up in kennels. A black wolf locked up in feces and starving. A Doberman pinscher in the same condition.

There were other animals. Three skinny pit bulls running loose in the house. A bloodhound reported to be malnourished, two cockatiels and two ferrets – all without sufficient food – and a chinchilla with food and water.

Investigators also found veterinary medicine and piles of feces scattered on the dining room floor.

Nunziata, 40, was booked into the St. Lucie County jail on Monday and is being detained in lieu of $42,500 bail. She faces 16 counts of animal abuse charges and one charge of having the wolf without a permit.

Nunziata told investigators that she had put down the dogs on Saturday and had been too distraught to remove their bodies.

The malnurished bloodhound reportedly removed from Nunziata's home.

She said she had received the euthanasia from her landlord, who had called to tell her that the syringes where in her mailbox ready for use by saying in code, “The snowman had arrived.” (more…)

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…)

Martin County school district and health officials are working to determine what caused more than 100 students, some of them ill, to stay home from Hobe Sound Elementary School on Wednesday and Thursday.

On Thursday, 124 of the school’s 715 students were absent, Martin school district spokeswoman Cathy Brennan said.

The day before, 118 were absent, while another 24 children went home early, complaining of nausea and vomiting, Brennan said.

(more…)