FORT PIERCE — Shelitta Woods calls the past six months “miserable.”

“You got to understand, it’d been like 13, 14 years before I had another child,” Woods said. “It was just me and Lil’ Bo, just me and Lil’ Bo, everywhere I go, me and Lil’ Bo.”

Woods’ 16-year-old son, Torenda “Lil’ Bo” Youngblood Jr., was fatally shot at his bus stop March 9, two days after Demetrius Wells, 18, sustained fatal wounds in a drive-by shooting. Two men also were hit by gunfire during separate shootings between the homicides. (more…)

Laurel wilt, a deadly and triumphant foe of millions of large redbay laurels, avocados and related trees, has arrived in St. Lucie and Martin counties, agricultural inspectors say.

Once a tree is infected, there is no cure and it dies in a matter of weeks, said the state’s leading expert, Bud Mayfield, an entomologist with the state Department of Agricultural and Consumer Affairs’ Division of Forestry. Prevention is considered nearly impossible, he said, because only one fungicide can treat it and the process is lengthy.

The disease, caused by a fungus carried on the ambrosia flying beetle that seeks out laurel and related species, entered the United States in 2003. It arrived from southeastern Asia at a Georgia port.

It leapfrogged its way south, reaching Indian River County in 2006.

In April, it was detected in St. Lucie County and confirmed in Martin County on June 30.

In Indian River county, Brian Combs, certified arborist and general manager of Bug Master in Vero Beach, said it took the disease about a year to kill 99 percent of the redbays and other trees susceptible to the wilt at Sebastian Inlet State Park. It has already spread to back yards. The cost to prevent it with fungicide runs about $250 and up per tree, he said. (more…)

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…)

By JASON SCHULTZ

INDIANTOWN— Fires that broke out near Indiantown in western Martin County over the weekend continued to burn last night and have charred more than 1,400 acres while crews tackled another large fire near Palm City, according to fire officials.

Residents from the Indianwood Mobile Home Park were evacuated and the American Red Cross has opened its shelter on Kanner Highway in Stuart for fire evacuees, according to a Martin County press release last night.

Three of the four brush fires that burned hundreds of acres near Indiantown, closed roads and prompted authorities to cut power in the Treasure Coast Sunday continued to burn overnight.

Two flare-ups occurred this afternoon.

The one between the Booker Park fire and the Lincoln Park fire was about 3 acres, said Melissa Yunas, a wildfire specialist with the state Division of Forestry.

The second flare-up, near the Indian Trail fire, jumped over a canal and headed toward three homes in the Little Ranch Estates neighborhood.

Firefighters took up positions around the homes.

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PORT SALERNO — Ann Gunsolus can’t bear the thought of losing her home, even though it’s a makeshift campsite in a privately owned woods a stone’s throw from U.S. 1.

“Cry: That’s what I do so far is cry,” Gunsolus said, while thinking about where she will go when the authorities evict the homeless people from the woods. “When you have nothing, there’s not much you can do.”

Gunsolus and more than a dozen other homeless men and women fear sheriff’s deputies will roust them as soon as Thursday from the patchwork of tents and tarps they call home. (more…)

FORT PIERCE — Sitting in a living room filled with marijuana smoke, Alfred Foster Welling III had a problem: St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office investigators executing a search warrant at his home.

Welling’s encounter with the law enforcers in the 1900 block of South 34th Street ended Thursday with his arrest on felony charges including cultivation of marijuana, possession of marijuana with intent and possession of more than 20 grams of marijuana, according to recently obtained records.
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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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A man was flown to a burn center in critical condition on Friday night after working on a trailer in Fort Pierce.

The man, described to be in his mid-20s, had been using a saw to cut up the hitch of a pick-up truck in a wooden area off McNeill Road, St. Lucie County Fire District spokeswoman Catherine Chaney said. The trailer had a leaking gas tank and vapors from the tank ignited, causing a flash fire, Chaney said. (more…)