By KATHLEEN CHAPMAN
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

RIVIERA BEACH – By the time Vincent Clark was charged with felony neglect in the drug-overdose death of his 21-month-old son, Darius, he had been accused of attacking women at least six times.

When Clark pistol-whipped Darius’ mother, Toccara Nobles, in March, workers at the state Department of Children and Families were concerned enough to designate the case “high-risk.”

That meant that under Florida law, department attorneys were required to ask the court for permission to supervise Darius.

The DCF made a “major mistake” when it failed to do so five weeks before Darius died, Administrator Perry Borman said Friday in response to questions from The Palm Beach Post.

Department leaders say they did not do enough to protect the toddler, who was found dead in his bed in late April with enough drugs in his system to kill an adult.

“We ought to learn as much from this case as humanly possible,” DCF Assistant Secretary George Sheldon said.

Among those lessons: When the DCF leaves children in a troubled home, workers may need to visit the family as often as once a day. They also must ensure that domestic violence victims have the help they need to leave their abusers, Sheldon said.

State and local DCF leaders say they will make changes as a result of Darius’ death, including efforts to keep better track of the help parents are receiving.

A bill awaiting Gov. Charlie Crist’s signature also would give the DCF the power to seek court orders to remove a dangerous parent from a household, rather than relying on a victim to do so.

John Walsh, head of the Foster Children’s Project of the Legal Aid Society in Palm Beach County, said Darius’ case is like others he has seen since the state began pushing to lessen the removal of children from homes.

“Maybe it is wanting to believe that families should be together so badly that you ignore the obvious signs of danger,” Walsh said. “You want to believe that the mother will actually keep him out of the home, when in a domestic violence situation, her word is worth almost nothing.”

Since January 2007, the DCF has reduced the number of children living apart from their birth parents by 18percent. Secretary Bob Butterworth has set a goal of a 50percent reduction, saying many former foster children have told him they would have been much better off with their birth parents.

But when children are left at home, Butterworth said this year, the DCF needs to offer supervision and intense counseling to parents struggling with domestic violence or substance abuse.

Nobles didn’t get that kind of help in dealing with Clark, whom police describe as a drug dealer who has been repeatedly arrested on charges of violence against women.

In 2003, Riviera Beach police said he smashed the windows at two homes because a woman would not come out to see him. In 2004, he allegedly shattered the window of another girlfriend’s car, just missing their 6-month-old baby. The same year, police said he punched a woman in front of their 2-year-old child.

In 2005, police charged him with pulling a gun on a woman, calling her a “bitch” and threatening to shoot her.

But he spent little time in jail because the women refused to testify against him. In 2007, he punched Nobles in the face. She told police she would prosecute and seek a restraining order, but didn’t.

Even so, DCF attorneys decided after the pistol-whipping in March that they could protect Darius by getting Nobles to sign a safety plan saying she would get a restraining order against Clark and attend counseling.

Five weeks after that decision, the toddler was dead, with oxycodone and cocaine in his system. Though it is not known how the toddler got the drugs, Nobles had let Clark spend the night.

In the weeks before the child’s death, DCF employees designated the case a “red flag,” meaning it deserved their highest attention. But though they contacted the mother by phone, they didn’t visit her home between March 8 and April 21. And they failed to find out that Nobles had skipped her hearing for the restraining order.

“We became convinced that this mother was sincere in seeking a restraining order,” Sheldon said this week. “Should we have followed up? No question.”

Walsh said abused women often sign safety plans immediately after the violence, when the police are there and they know the DCF could take the children.

“Of course you are going to tell them anything, and probably even believe it yourself. … Is it true? No, of course not,” Walsh said. “I can’t tell you how many cases we’ve seen like that.”

Richard Wexler, a national advocate who urges foster care systems to keep children home with their parents, also sees problems with the case.

It can be extremely difficult for women to leave their abusers, he wrote this week in an e-mail.

“So while Toccara Nobles may well have meant it when she signed the service plan, it’s easy to imagine that resolve crumbling in the face of manipulation or threats from an abuser,” Wexler wrote. “DCF was not sufficiently on guard against that possibility. The case got a red-flag staffing but was treated with only yellow-flag urgency.”

Borman said he plans to make changes as a result of Darius’ case. He hopes to set up an electronic system that could automatically remind investigators to follow up on referrals to services such as domestic violence counseling.

The DCF investigates about 900 reports of child abuse and neglect a month in Palm Beach County, Borman said, taking the children in only about 5 percent of cases. He said the state needs to do a better job of tracking what it does for the others.

Darius’ death will not deter the state from its goal of keeping more families together, Sheldon said.

“But what it does mean is that we have to be especially vigilant to make sure services get to that child,” he said.

Staff writer Rochelle E.B. Gilken contributed to this story.

A family at risk

> Vincent Clark, 29, is a felon with a history of drug charges who was accused of attacking women at least six times, according to Riviera Beach police records. He is charged with felony neglect in the death of his son.

> Toccara Nobles, 25, had no history of felony arrests before she was charged with neglect in Darius’ death. She backed away from her promise to get a restraining order against Clark and allowed him to sleep over the night Darius died.

> Darius Clark was 21 months old when Nobles and Clark discovered him dead in their bed on April 21. The medical examiner found he had enough drugs in his system to kill an adult.

Copyright 2008 The Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc.
Palm Beach Post (Florida)
June 21, 2008 Saturday
FINAL EDITION
SECTION: A SECTION; Pg. 1A
LENGTH: 1,082 words

By KATHLEEN CHAPMAN
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

RIVIERA BEACH – A month before toddler Darius Clark died with cocaine and painkillers in his system, employees at the state Department of Children and Families met to consider whether his mother could protect him.

They knew that the 21-month-old child’s father, Vincent Clark, was a violent drug abuser with a long felony arrest history. On March 7, he pistol-whipped the mother, Toccara Nobles, so badly that she had to get staples to close the wound on her head, according to DCF records released Friday.

The next day, Nobles agreed not to let Clark near her children and promised to get a restraining order and attend domestic-violence classes.

But the DCF records show no evidence that any investigators visited the family to see whether Nobles was following through on those promises until April 21, when the toddler was discovered dead from a drug overdose.

They also failed to check court records to see whether Nobles had gotten a restraining order before Darius died. If they had, investigators would have found that the mother applied for an order but never appeared for the court hearing March 28, meaning Clark had a legal right to visit Darius whenever he wanted.

On April 20, Nobles allowed Clark to spend the night with her two boys even though he was wanted on felony charges.

Nobles has told police she woke up in the middle of the night and found “white stuff” around the child’s mouth. She wiped it off and went back to sleep. The next morning, Nobles and Clark found Darius dead in their bed.

Riviera Beach police investigators found a bottle of pills on the bedroom dresser, according to police records. An autopsy revealed he had enough oxycodone in his system to kill an adult. The positive test for cocaine meant that Darius could have been around people who were smoking crack, according to DCF records. The state’s investigation had been open for nearly six weeks. DCF had not interviewed Darius’ 6-year-old brother.

DCF has not yet completed its formal review of the case. But spokeswoman Leslie Mann said in an e-mail Friday that his death was a tragedy that the department “could not have foreseen.”

The March incident was the third report to DCF of domestic violence between the parents. In November, Clark was charged with battery after Riviera Beach police said he came to the home where Clark was living, tried to take the children and punched her in the face. The police report listed Clark’s occupation as “drug dealer.”

A police detective called DCF after the pistol-whipping in March, saying he was “very upset” that the mother had not gotten a restraining order after the last beating.

Nobles had no felony arrest record herself, and she had a supportive extended family that included a mother and father who work for the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office. There were no allegations the children were being abused, so the decision came down to whether she would protect them from Clark.

On March 8, Nobles signed a DCF “safety plan” promising that the father would have no contact with the children. She said she would move, apply for the restraining order and go to domestic violence classes.

Six days later, DCF workers met for a “red flag staffing” – ordered in serious cases – to decide whether they should recommend supervision. That would have allowed investigators to drop by unannounced to make sure Clark wasn’t living there. They decided to take the case to DCF attorneys.

But on March 19, DCF’s legal staff decided not to take her case to court. Under recommendation, they checked “no judicial action needed.” For the reason, they wrote: “mx (mother) protective.”

“The father was not living in the home, mom was pursuing a restraining order, and we were acting on the belief that the children were safe,” Mann said Friday.

Both parents are charged with felony neglect in his death. His 6-year-old brother is living with his maternal grandmother, a lieutenant at the Palm Beach County Jail.

Three days after Darius died, DCF got a report from Knowledge is Power, the domestic-violence program Nobles pledged to attend.

“Client was a no-show to scheduled classes,” the document said.

Darius Clark’s short life

State records show 21-month-old Darius Clark’s death in April followed a trail of family violence and broken promises:

> July 18, 2006: Darius Clark is born to Toccara Nobles and Vincent Clark.

> Nov. 21, 2007: Clark shows up at a relative’s home and tries to take Darius and an older son from Nobles. He punches her in the face and is charged with battery. She does not file for a restraining order.

> March 7, 2008: Clark pistol-whips Nobles, requiring her to get staples to close a wound on her head. It is the third report of violence between the couple that the Department of Children and Families investigates.

> March 8: The mother signs a DCF safety plan promising to have no contact with Clark, a repeat felony offender who police say is a drug dealer. She tells an investigator she will move away from Clark, get a restraining order and attend domestic-violence courses.

> March 19: DCF attorneys decide not to ask for court supervision of her case, which would have allowed investigators to check whether the father was around the children, because they believe Nobles is able to protect the children.

> March 28: The mother fails to show up for a hearing on a restraining order she applied for March 13, so a judge dismisses it. Clark therefore has a legal right to be around the children whenever he wants.

> April 20: Nobles allows Clark to spend the night with her, Darius and their 6-year-old son on Ninth Street in Riviera Beach even though he has several felony warrants for his arrest. Nobles says she wakes up in the middle of the night to find ‘white stuff’ around the toddler’s mouth, but goes back to sleep.

> April 21: Nobles wakes up around 7 a.m. to get Darius ready for day care and finds his body stiff. Clark tries CPR, but Darius is dead on arrival at St. Mary’s Medical Center.

> April 24: The Knowledge is Power program reports to DCF that Nobles never showed up for domestic violence classes.

> June 5: Nobles is charged with felony neglect in the baby’s death after the medical examiner finds cocaine in the baby’s system and enough oxycodone to kill an adult. Clark, who was previously arrested on the other warrants, faces the same charge of felony neglect.

Copyright 2008 The Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc.
Palm Beach Post (Florida)
June 14, 2008 Saturday
FINAL EDITION
SECTION: A SECTION; Pg. 1A
LENGTH: 1,052 words

By KATHLEEN CHAPMAN
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

LANTANA – Before the court order that separated Bert Sayre from his family and forced him into isolation, he had no idea what was making him so sick.

And at first, neither did the doctors. But by last May, the roofer from Tampa was too weak to lift his daughter, then only 3 years old.

On his third trip to his third hospital, he finally got the diagnosis. He had tuberculosis, a disease that is now rare in the United States but was once the nation’s leading cause of death.

The antibiotics that doctors prescribed to treat Sayre made him sick, and an emergency room doctor told him they were killing his liver. Sayre was afraid he would die.

The Florida Department of Health judged his disease a threat to the public and said he may have caused the complications by drinking. Sayre denied that and fought commitment because he didn’t want to leave his daughter. After a Hillsborough County court hearing where Sayre said everyone wore a mask, a judge ordered Sayre to A.G. Holley State Hospital.

Sayre, 52, lived for months in an isolation room inside the hospital while he was contagious. He wasn’t the most cooperative patient at first.

“Believe me, I am an ornery old cuss,” he said.

Doctors there confirmed that conventional medications were hurting his liver, even at the locked hospital, where he had no way to drink. They saved his life, Sayre said, by finding another drug that worked. Now, after eight months of treatment, he is leading bingo games to help pass his remaining time inside the hospital.

Sayre said he was in disbelief when he heard that during the state’s legislative session, House Healthcare Council Chairman Aaron Bean, R-Fernandina Beach, proposed closing A.G. Holley to save money.

“You don’t understand how dangerous this disease is, until you get it,” Sayre said.

Instead of shutting down the hospital, Bean added a last-minute amendment to the state budget that requires the state to privatize the 50-bed hospital, built on Lantana Road in 1950.

The state last week asked parties interested in redeveloping the property to notify the state by June 9.

Legislators including Bean and state Rep. Mary Brandenburg, D-West Palm Beach, have said Florida should look at models in other states to see how they care for tuberculosis patients.

But health directors in other states, who are struggling to isolate and treat people who carry dangerous strains of the disease, say Florida’s hospital in Lantana is the envy of the nation.

States across the country have laws that allow judges or health department doctors to lock up people who could spread tuberculosis but refuse to take medication or wear a mask.

With no facility like A.G. Holley, some states, including California, confine people to motel rooms and post guards outside the door to keep them from leaving. And in other states, jails and prisons are the only option for contagious people who won’t cooperate.

Arizona made national news and faced an expensive lawsuit in 2007 when it committed tuberculosis patient Robert Daniels to a jail cell for months with no phone, windows, shower or television.

Dr. Karen Lewis, tuberculosis control officer for Arizona, said state health officials have “looked to A.G. Holley as a wonderful model of what we as a state would love to have.”

In Georgia, which confines about six tuberculosis patients a year by court order, health officials have to rely on local jails and a private prison hospital. The state would be “very interested” in paying to send its own patients to A.G. Holley if the two states could work out payment arrangements, spokeswoman Taka Wiley said.

“If it were possible, we would strongly consider an agreement with A.G. Holley Hospital,” she said.

In other states, there is often financial pressure to release patients before they are fully cured, said Dr. Lee Reichman, executive director of the New Jersey Medical School Global Tuberculosis Institute.

“I wish I had an A.G. Holley Hospital here,” he said.

Many of A.G. Holley’s patients complain about the hospital because they don’t like to be locked up, Sayre said, but they don’t realize how lucky they are.

“You think you are in jail,” he said. “But I know I don’t want to be in jail. I want to be right here in this bed with my remote, getting better. In jail, they treat you like a leper.”

A.G. Holley’s doctors are experts on the disease, while many general physicians “just don’t have the knowledge,” Sayre said.

The hospital’s medical executive director, Dr. David Ashkin, says polls show the overwhelming majority of Americans support isolating people with deadly communicable diseases who don’t accept treatment.

“But if we are saying as a society that we need to protect the public from this person,” Ashkin said, “don’t we owe it to that person to give them the best care possible?”

However, the hospital no longer needs such a large building or the surrounding land, and the town of Lantana has long worked with the state on a plan that would preserve the tuberculosis treatment program while attracting a medical research complex to the site. Dale Brill, who heads Gov. Charlie Crist’s Office of Tourism, Trade and Economic Development, is overseeing development plans.

Brill said A.G. Holley is a “world-class facility” and did not ask Bean to write the budget amendment that privatized it. A draft of Brill’s invitation to bid for development of the land requires that any private institution taking over the tuberculosis program retain or at least give hiring priority to current workers, have 10 years of public health experience, be “intimately involved” with protecting the public from tuberculosis and take orders on patient care from the state.

The program could stay on the same land in Lantana, move elsewhere in Florida or become part of a teaching hospital.

Patients at A.G. Holley are confined to isolation rooms, where negative pressure keeps contaminated air from leaving, until they are no longer contagious. Patients who are contagious are required to wear masks when they walk through the hospital. They also may go outdoors, where the disease doesn’t spread because of the air and sunlight.

After patients stop coughing bacteria into the air, they can take off their masks and spend time in the hospital’s recreation room, which has television, video games and pool. Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous groups are available, and the hospital offers arts and crafts, including crocheting.

Patients who earn the trust of administrators and are no longer contagious may leave for fishing trips, entertainment and church.

In 2007, the state of Florida reported 980 tuberculosis cases. When told they have a potentially fatal disease, most people faithfully take medication over several months until they are cured. But a small percentage refuse. Others get sick when they combine the TB medications, which are processed in the liver, with drugs or alcohol.

Difficult patients are potential incubators for new, dangerous forms of tuberculosis. When people start taking the drugs but stop before they are fully cured, the strongest bacteria survive. The patient then develops a more dangerous, drug-resistant strain that can be spread to as many as 30 people over time. Each case of tuberculosis resistant to conventional drugs can take up to $500,000 and a year or more to treat.

Awsha Sanders, 26, was ordered to A.G. Holley against her will on Feb. 26. She said she has long been obsessed with cleanliness, but couldn’t avoid germs at the homeless shelter in Tampa, where she saw women coughing blood into the sink.

She lost a baby at five months because she was so sick with tuberculosis. Health department workers tried to give her drugs, often coming to meet her in local parks.

When they said she had missed 18 doses, she was ordered to A.G. Holley.

Sanders said she fought commitment because she doesn’t like to be held captive. But she is glad she came.

“God knows where I would have been, or how much sicker I would have been,” she said.

Sayre thinks he probably caught tuberculosis from another roofer.

It was the first he had heard of the disease since he was tested in school as a little kid.

“You think it’s only overseas,” he said. “But anyone can get this.”

He is scheduled to be released soon and hopes the state will preserve the same high standards for the patients who come after him.

If they don’t, he said, “people are going to die. And they are going to spread it like wildfire.”

About tuberculosis

> The disease was once called consumption, because it seems to eat away at the body, causing weakness and severe weight loss. The bacteria attack the lungs, causing a bloody cough.

> Tuberculosis is not as contagious as the measles or chicken pox, but medical experts estimate that one person can spread the airborne disease to up to 30 people over time.

> Though about one in three people worldwide carry the bacteria that cause tuberculosis, only one in every 10 who have the bacteria will get sick.

> The disease was once the leading cause of death in the United States, and many states are now grappling with drug-resistant strains.

Treatment in the U.S.

How other states handle contagious tuberculosis patients who refuse to cooperate with treatment:

> California: Uses guards to keep patients inside hospital rooms, motel rooms or the patients’ homes. Tuberculosis patients who are mentally ill can be sent to the state’s psychiatric hospital.

> North Carolina: Patients who repeatedly refuse treatment can be criminally prosecuted as ‘health law violators.’ They are sent to one of three prisons.

> Texas: Replacing its 1953 state tuberculosis hospital with a $35.2 million, 75-bed facility.

> New Mexico: Has an agreement to send patients to Texas.

> Massachusetts: Opened a 12-bed wing for tuberculosis inside a public hospital.

> Missouri: Has eight beds inside a university hospital dedicated to tuberculosis patients.

> Georgia: Has special rooms in local jails or a private prison.

> New Jersey: Has isolation rooms in a teaching hospital.

Copyright 2008 The Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc.
Palm Beach Post (Florida)
May 25, 2008 Sunday
FINAL EDITION
SECTION: A SECTION; Pg. 1A
LENGTH: 1,659 words

By KATHLEEN CHAPMAN
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

WEST PALM BEACH – The trial of an octogenarian accused of killing a man outside a Boca Raton synagogue began Monday with an unusual conversation between the 81-year-old defendant and the jurors who will decide his case.

Murder suspects typically sit in silence as their attorneys screen the jury pool, trying to weed out those who seem likely to convict. But defendant Marc Benayer, who is adamant about serving as his own attorney, asked prospective jurors the questions himself.

Several told Benayer they did not think it was a good idea to stand trial for murder without a lawyer.

“With all due respect, Mr. Benayer, I’m not sure that you are capable of properly defending yourself in this matter,” one prospective juror told him.

“Bad move,” another said.

Benayer is accused of shooting Jonathan Samuels and pointing his gun at four other people at the Chabad Weltman synagogue during Rosh Hashana services in October 2005. Samuels died nine months later.

Benayer had at least three attorneys before he insisted on representing himself. His first withdrew, saying Benayer asked him to do things he cannot as an attorney. The second left the case after he said Benayer tried to hire a hit man from jail to kill him.

Christopher Haddad is now assisting Benayer as standby counsel, offering help and advice but allowing the defendant to mostly speak on his own behalf. As jury selection was about to begin Monday morning, Haddad asked Palm Beach County Circuit Judge Richard Wennet to reconsider whether Benayer is competent to act as his own attorney.

Experts disagreed about whether Benayer is competent, but another judge ruled in August that he is.

Benayer said he was prepared and wanted to start the trial immediately. Wennet allowed the trial to continue with Benayer as his own attorney, but paused several times so that Benayer could get advice from Haddad.

In a wide-ranging conversation with his prospective jurors, Benayer asked whether any of them had ever been threatened or confronted.

One man said he killed a soldier at age 12, while living with his family in Africa. He thought his life was at risk, he said, and he had no choice.

“Wrong,” Benayer told him.

“It was a war,” the juror said.

Benayer asked prospective jurors whether they thought people have a right to defend themselves against verbal threats.

One woman said she endured threats from her ex-husband for more than year, and handled the situation by asking police what she should do.

“It’s not easy to walk away” when threatened with physical harm, Benayer told them.

“But it’s the smart thing to do,” one prospective juror shot back.

One first-grade teacher told Benayer that she teaches her students that when someone is bothering them, they may walk away or ask the person to stop.

He also wanted to know who owned guns, who had heard about his case and who believed what they read in the newspaper.

One of the prospective jurors said he lived across the street from the synagogue in Century Village and had read extensively about the shooting. He was dismissed after other jurors said he had discussed the case with them.

Benayer told one man that he should not trust what he reads in the newspaper. The potential juror asked Benayer what actually happened. “I’m the one to ask questions, sir,” Benayer said.

Opening arguments are scheduled to begin at 8:30 a.m. today. Benayer told the judge that he has planned what he wants to say and looks forward to telling jurors the truth.

Copyright 2007 The Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc.
Palm Beach Post (Florida)
November 27, 2007 Tuesday
FINAL EDITION
SECTION: LOCAL; Pg. 1B
LENGTH: 575 words

By KATHLEEN CHAPMAN
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

The teen who severely beat a preoperative transsexual on Palm Beach was sentenced to four and a half months of probation Thursday.

Palm Beach County Juvenile Court Judge Peter Blanc rejected recommendations from prosecutors and the Department of Juvenile Justice, who said the teen was likely to commit more crimes and should be locked in a high-security residential program.

The teen, then 17, was out with his best friend on Clematis Street in July 2006 when they met the victim, a 39-year-old who has breast implants and has lived as a woman for more than a decade. They went to Palm Beach and were about to have sex when the 17-year-old said he discovered that she had a male organ.

He initially left with his friend, then went back and beat the victim. A witness who was in the lifeguard tower at the public beach that night testified that he slammed the victim’s head into the lifeguard stand so hard that he could feel it shake.

She was covered in blood, lost teeth and was taken to the hospital.

Blanc said he didn’t believe the teen’s argument of self-defense and said there was no excusing the violent beating that got him the charge of aggravated battery.

But he disagreed that the teen, now 18, is a threat to public safety, and withheld adjudication on the case. The circumstances of the case were so unusual that he is unlikely to find himself in a similar situation again, Blanc said.

The teen’s father was outraged that prosecutors did not charge the transsexual for sexual contact with a 17-year-old, a second-degree felony. The case was complicated by the fact that the beating victim did not appear to testify against the teen, and did not respond to calls or a certified letter from prosecutors asking what sentence she thought he should receive.

The teen said they had oral sex in a car on the way to the beach. She denies any sexual contact with him, but said in a deposition there might have been some kissing.

The teen made a tearful plea to the judge, saying that he had already served a year of house arrest and wanted to get back to a normal life.

“I was wrong,” he said. “But he did wrong to me.”

In 2003, the teen was charged with mooning another boy while they were wrestling. And after being put on house arrest for the beating charge, he was charged again with violating a judge’s orders by going out drinking with a friend.

His attorney, John Brewer, said the state attorney had already offered probation in an earlier plea deal for the beating, but the family did not want to accept it. The assistant state attorney in the case, Sarah Willis, told the judge she was unaware of that offer.

Blanc said there were many wrongs in the case. He told the teen he was wrong to be out drinking and looking to have sex with a stranger. It also was wrong for a 39-year-old to get involved with a 17-year-old, and wrong to have sex with someone under circumstances he wouldn’t have agreed to.

But the biggest wrong, Blanc said, was for the teen to respond with violence.

Blanc ordered him to finish high school, get a part-time job, go to counseling, perform community service and avoid the victim.

He also will have a curfew and remain on probation until he turns 19 in January.

Copyright 2007 The Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc.
Palm Beach Post (Florida)
August 31, 2007 Friday
FINAL EDITION
SECTION: LOCAL; Pg. 3B
LENGTH: 533 words

By KATHLEEN CHAPMAN
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

WEST PALM BEACH – In the year before the group rape of a woman in her Dunbar Village apartment, the federal government sent a survey asking residents whether they felt safe in the public housing complex.

More than half of the 33 households that responded to the 2006 survey said they did not. And a much higher number – 63 percent – said they felt “unsafe” or “very unsafe” in the parking areas of the public housing development off Tamarind Avenue.

The negative responses to questions about safety put Dunbar Village well below the average for public housing complexes nationwide and underscore the long-term problems facing the city and housing authority. The complex also ranked near the bottom of the West Palm Beach Housing Authority’s five public housing developments.

A fourth suspect was charged Aug. 16 in connection with rape June 18 at Dunbar Village — a brutal attack that shattered the nerves of local residents and gained national attention.

Investigators said up to 10 young men raped the woman, assaulted her 12-year-old son and forced the mother and son to have sex with each other in their home.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development sends confidential surveys to a random sample of public housing residents across the country nearly every year. They ask residents for their opinions on a wide-ranging list of topics including safety, management, repairs, lead poisoning and bugs.

SCREENING SHORTCOMINGS

West Palm Beach Housing Authority board member Paul Dumars, who is also chief financial officer at the South Florida Water Management District, said he hadn’t seen the 2006 survey results.

But the response “makes you feel bad,” he said. “Nobody should not feel safe in their own home.”

When asked about the reasons for crime at Dunbar, 58 percent agreed that resident screening is a problem. More than half – 52 percent – agreed with the statement that “residents don’t care.”

Just under half thought that the location of the project was a factor in the crime. Forty-two percent agreed that bad lighting contributed to the problem. Nearly a quarter – 23 percent – said they felt “very unsafe” in their homes, and 29 percent more said they felt “unsafe.”

City officials say some safeguards are in place to prevent violence at the public housing complex and other actions are being taken.

Public housing residents are screened, said Laurel Robinson, executive director of the housing authority. No one with a violent felony or history of drug arrests can qualify. If anyone under the auspices of a public housing resident commits a crime, the resident can be evicted, she said.

During the past six months, she said, the authority has sent eviction notices to 22 households. Many were for failure to pay rent or rule violations, she said, but about a third were for criminal acts.

Residents may complain about resident screening, she said, because, although the housing authority weeds out criminals, it doesn’t screen for being a good neighbor. “You can still park your car in the wrong place, or leave trash all over the ground,” she said.

It is human nature to be more diligent about reporting a complaint than a compliment, Robinson said. But the federal surveys, which are sent to only a sampling of a development’s residents and not all are returned, give a good picture of what is going on in a neighborhood, she said.

“In my opinion, the residents have a very sophisticated analysis of what there is,” she said. “They are not going to sugarcoat anything, but they are not going to say that we should eliminate public housing.”

Most Dunbar respondents gave the housing authority good scores for communication, courtesy, responsiveness and repairs. And despite their fears about safety, nearly two-thirds said they would recommend it to a friend or relative seeking public housing.

The housing authority has taken several steps to improve safety at Dunbar. Florida Power & Light repaired broken lights along Douglass Avenue. And the authority will employ a private security firm, Security Works, as long as it can afford it, Robinson said.

RECENT ACTIVISM LAUDED

The federal government will not survey housing authority residents this year, so it will not be possible to see whether those measures will improve Dunbar’s safety scores. Residents seem to appreciate the extra security, even if some are skeptical about how long it will last, board members said.

Dunbar Village has not always ranked as one the least safe complexes on resident surveys, Robinson said. Crime is cyclical and does flare up in different parts of the city, she said. In past years, the housing authority had more problems at Robinson Village off 45th Street, she said.

Dumars said he was encouraged by events such as the prayer walk and community fair at Dunbar Village during the weekend.

“I am excited about that,” he said, “that the community is responding, rather than just pointing out negative statistics.”

Copyright 2007 The Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc.
Palm Beach Post (Florida)
August 20, 2007 Monday
FINAL EDITION
SECTION: LOCAL; Pg. 1B
LENGTH: 1,172 words

By KATHLEEN CHAPMAN and THOMAS R. COLLINS
Palm Beach Post Staff Writers

WEST PALM BEACH – A gang rape that horrified people across the nation could reawaken long-dormant plans to tear down the Dunbar Village housing project.

At the suggestion of federal officials, the West Palm Beach Housing Authority will inject new urgency into an old plan to rebuild the project with a mix of new public housing units and affordable homes for people with higher incomes.

Housing authority Executive Director Laurel Robinson said Thursday that she would be delighted to be able, finally, to remake Dunbar Village. For at least four years, she said, the agency has planned to improve the barracks-style development with open plazas, homes for private ownership, better parking and roads connecting to the neighborhood.

Rejected for a federal grant in 2004 and focused on the MerryPlace project to the east, the city and the housing authority put plans for Dunbar Village on hold. Since the attack on a mother and her 12-year-old son in June, however, outside attention has focused on the outdated housing project in a dangerous and often forgotten corner of West Palm Beach.

With public pressure, it finally may be possible to win millions of dollars from the federal government or find city or private money to tear down the entire public housing project at once, city leaders said. After the rape, calls and e-mails from across the country came into the city, asking what was being done to help the victims.

“Dunbar Village is in the news, and people want to help, so maybe we can do it quicker,” Mayor Lois Frankel said. “If we can figure out where to move 300 people, then we can do something quicker than a row at a time.”

Orlando Cabrera, an assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, called Robinson after the rape to suggest that she rebuild Dunbar Village and begin applying for vouchers that would pay rent for residents who would have to move.

Frankel and Robinson met with federal officials again Tuesday, and the city is asking local consultants to begin drawing up plans. Robinson, who met with residents Thursday and Friday, said most say they support rebuilding the housing project.

The city’s redevelopment head, Kim Briesemeister, has talked to a developer interested in the project, a New York company that has worked with housing authorities up north. Briesemeister said she’s sure local companies would be interested, too.

Robinson said two things are nonnegotiable: The housing authority, an independent agency, will not sell the 17-acre site to a private developer or anyone else; and although affordable homes for people with higher incomes should be added, Dunbar Village cannot lose a large number of public housing rental units reserved for the poorest residents.

Many working people in Dunbar won’t be able to afford homes for sale. The waiting list for public housing units in the city stands at about 850 people, and the need is too great to lose large numbers of existing units at Dunbar Village, Robinson said.

The housing chief did not say that every family there would have the right to return to a rebuilt Dunbar Village, nor did she set a number of public housing units to be preserved. She stressed, however, that the number of public housing units there should stay as close as possible to the 194 there today.

“We are going to have to redo Dunbar and stay true to our mission of serving extremely low-income families,” Robinson said.

Residents of Dunbar Village at the time the bulldozers roll would be offered a housing choice voucher, formerly known as Section 8, to help pay for an apartment in Palm Beach County, she said. That would cost about $4,000 a family, or $800,000 in federal money, assuming that residents could return to new units in Dunbar Village after about five months of construction, she said.

Frankel said she wants to increase the density to include homes for people with higher incomes, without pushing out the poorest. The mayor agrees that the new project should not lose units for the lowest-wage workers of Dunbar, the nurse’s aides and day-care workers, and knows that many feel attached to the community.

“It’s all part of the sensitivity of moving people,” Frankel said. “They are not inanimate objects.”

But, she said, “that neighborhood has to change.”

‘MONOTONOUS BOXES’

The housing authority’s 2004 application for HOPE VI, the federal program that pays winning projects millions of dollars to rebuild, was blunt about Dunbar Village’s shortcomings. The agency described the development as “monotonous rows of monolithic one- and two-story, basic, rectangular boxes more suggestive of warehousing than housing for families.”

The only way to drive into Dunbar Village, the agency said, was down the “sadly named Division Avenue,” past the railroad tracks and then down a long entryway lined with trash receptacles.

At that time, the housing authority planned to reduce the number of public housing units in Dunbar Village from 226 to 140, of which 40 of would be reserved for elderly and disabled renters. The agency also hoped to add 100 fair-market-rate rental units and 20 townhouses for sale.

The grant went to other cities that year, and the city’s ambitious plans were shelved. After three failed applications for Pleasant City and one for Dunbar Village, the agency gave up.

“Finally, you wake up to the realization that they are never going to give something like that,” Robinson said last month.

The federal government intends to phase out the HOPE VI program, which had awarded about $600 million annually. HUD has not requested money for HOPE VI for three years, but Congress nonetheless appropriated a smaller amount of money in 2005, 2006 and this year.

Four of 26 cities that applied got a total of $71.9 million in 2006 revitalization grants, and the housing authority did not try. Applications for 2007 are due in November, and Robinson said the agency might apply. With only about $90 million available this year, it is unlikely that more than four or five cities will win the awards, she said.

Frankel said she did not realize until an interview with The Palm Beach Post Wednesday that the money still was being awarded. Plans have been on hold in part, she said, because she did not want to get distracted from doing a good job with MerryPlace, the mixed-income development beginning to rise just to the east in Pleasant City.

Minutes of housing authority board meetings did not often mention Dunbar Village in the year before the rape, with most meetings focused on finalizing plans for MerryPlace. On June 20, two days after the rape, Robinson told the agency’s board that the contract for a police security camera was still in the city’s legal department but that she had hired a worker to focus on redeveloping Dunbar Village.

Dunbar Village is just part of Frankel’s goal to clean up the surrounding neighborhood of Coleman Park, the mayor said.

She always intended to focus on one blighted neighborhood at a time, Frankel said, and with Pleasant City coming together, Coleman Park’s time has come. The city has ramped up code enforcement to cut down on trash and dumping and has been buying empty lots.

Soon, Frankel said, the city will issue a bid for the construction of affordable new homes on city lots throughout Coleman Park and other blighted neighborhoods.

The housing authority has emptied 13 former public housing buildings along Tamarind Avenue in Dunbar Village with which it hopes to attract businesses.

Last summer in San Francisco, at a mayor’s conference on planning issues facing American cities, Frankel led a round-table discussion on remaking Dunbar Village. Many agreed that attracting working- and middle-class homeowners to Dunbar Village will be difficult, more so than at MerryPlace, which is farther east, close to the ocean and half-million-dollar condos.

Dunbar Village, by contrast, is ringed by rail yards, industry and blight, Frankel said at the summit, and the neighborhood cannot qualify for some federal tax incentives because there is no grocery within a mile.

Still, there are signs that working- and middle-class people are willing to buy houses in Coleman Park.

Bishop Harold Calvin Ray’s Redemptive Life Fellowship’s Urban Initiatives Corp. built new single-family homes just blocks from Dunbar Village for families that meet income guidelines.

Realtor Serena Hopkinson and her family are restoring the 1926 home of legendary businessman Cracker Johnson on 14th Street near the project. Hopkinson is president of the Coleman Park Residents Association, which formed this year and includes Dunbar Village.

Mike Sobczak, a planner at Glatting Jackson Kercher Anglin, said Wednesday that the city contacted his company and others in April about compiling a plan for Dunbar Village. He said he sent an updated proposal only recently.

“I think that cities have different priorities, and you can’t do everything at once,” Sobczak said. “So my sense is that this may have been put onto a side burner.”

A city spokesman said Thursday that no one has been selected to do the work.

MANY LAMENT LOST COHESION

Dunbar Village is one of the city’s two original housing projects. The barracks-style complex was built in 1939 or 1940, less than three years after the United States passed a law establishing public housing nationwide. Named for the black poet and author Paul Laurence Dunbar, the segregated housing project was built on the coastal ridge overlooking the city.

Many of the area’s successful black residents grew up in or near Dunbar Village. They remember a lost sense of cohesiveness and pride.

“We were jealous of those people over there. That was one of the better communities,” said Zenobia Scruggs, a housing authority board member who lives in Pleasant City.

As times changed, though, the fence that rings the community has not always been able to keep out the neighborhood’s larger problems: the drug dealers, prostitutes and gangs, the idle teenagers some older people call “one-arm bandits” because they need one hand to hold up their sagging pants.

“There is no use pretending,” Robinson said, that Tamarind Avenue, just west of Dunbar Village’s fence, “isn’t the most drug-infested, crime-ridden street in the city.”

The development has aged. Many residents like the distinctive copper cupolas that crown the roof of each building, and the housing authority agrees they should be incorporated into the new design. But the windows leak, the street layout was not designed for an era when most residents have cars, and some of the buildings are cracked.

Bessie Mcghee, 83, said she has lived in Dunbar Village for as long as she can remember. She said no one has talk to her about rebuilding her home, but that would be a good thing. The rainwater gets in, bothering her.

As far as adding residents, she prefers that city officials leave the village as it is.

“No one bothers me, and I bother nobody,” Mcghee said.

About 125 residents attended meetings Thursday and Friday about the proposed demolition of Dunbar Village. By voice vote, the majority said they support the plan, Robinson said.

Some say they have been told previously that the housing authority was trying to get money for Dunbar Village. They don’t believe change will ever come.

There are still no guarantees of money, and the bulldozers won’t roll soon.

“But they said we would never build MerryPlace,” Robinson said. “And now it is going up.”

Copyright 2007 The Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc.
Palm Beach Post (Florida)
August 12, 2007 Sunday
FINAL EDITION
SECTION: A SECTION; Pg 1A
LENGTH: 1,908 words

By KATHLEEN CHAPMAN, KEVIN DEUTSCH and ALEJANDRA CANCINO
Palm Beach Post Staff Writers

WEST PALM BEACH – In the days after the vicious attack on a mother and son in Dunbar Village, detectives knocked on doors across the city, asking other mothers about their sons.

At least three of those mothers agreed to take their teenage sons in for questioning. And one by one, they were confronted with evidence that their boys had been inside the apartment where the gang rape and torture took place.

The first to be charged in the crime that horrified veteran investigators was Avion Lawson, 14, who police said confessed after they found his DNA in a condom at the scene. Next came Nathan Walker, 16, who denies participation but police say was linked to the crime by a palm print. And then, Jakaris Taylor, 15, who admitted he was at the scene and left a fingerprint inside the home, according to police, but has denied involvement.

Police are looking for as many as seven more suspects.

The three teens who have been arrested grew up in places where relatives could not always shield their boys from the violence around them. Walker’s mother, Ruby, said she was twice raped as a child, and attacked again while walking to a bus stop this year. In 2002, one of Lawson’s sisters killed the father of her child, who relatives said had repeatedly beaten her. Taylor lived in the Dunbar Village housing project, where police were called more than 700 times in the year leading up to the rape.

All three suspects in the gang rape had had previous run-ins with police. Taylor was arrested Jan. 6 on charges of robbery and battery, accused of punching a man in the face and stealing his bicycle near CityPlace. Lawson was also among the five teens arrested in that incident after police saw them running away.

But the victims later changed their story, Palm Beach County State Attorney spokesman Mike Edmondson said, and those cases are no longer pending.

Walker has a previous charge of trespassing after police said he jumped a school fence and was accused of being with boys who were trying to break in, his mother said. She does not think he was involved in that incident. His attorney Robert Gershman says he has two other open charges in juvenile court, both misdemeanors.

RELATIVES EXPRESS DISBELIEF

Family members say they can’t believe that boys they know could have done something as horrible as they are accused of doing in Dunbar Village.

Police say that on the night of June 18, the attackers tricked the 35-year-old victim into opening her door by saying the tires on her car were flat. She says that they forced their way inside, raped her repeatedly and forced her and her 12-year-old son to have sex with each other. They poured household chemicals into the boy’s eyes and over the woman’s body.

The mother and son, who immigrated from Haiti, said that when no neighbors came to help, they walked to Good Samaritan Hospital.

Palm Beach County State Attorney Barry Krischer has said he will take the cases to a grand jury to ensure that the teens will be tried and sentenced as adults. Otherwise, a judge would have discretion to sentence them as youthful offenders.

April Lawson sees her nephew’s picture on the news and says she is “still in disbelief” that this is the same boy she knows – the boy who used to climb trees, play football with friends and stay at her house some summers.

“He’s a good kid, a quiet kid,” she said last week from her tidy home near the Barracuda Bay water park in Riviera Beach, still in her work uniform. She prays for Avion all the time now, she said. But, she said, “I know he has to be punished for his crime.”

Lawson was 9 years old when his sister, Tiffany Parker, stabbed her child’s father, Kevin Lester, to death in West Palm Beach. Lester had a history of beating Parker, then 18, family members said at the time, and was twice charged with domestic violence. Witnesses said that Parker and Lester were fighting on the night she killed him with a stab wound to the chest. She pleaded guilty to manslaughter.

April Lawson said she doesn’t know if Avion witnessed the killing.

“Maybe that traumatized him. I don’t know,” she said.

Avion was always quiet, she said, and though his brothers opened up to her, Avion never did.

His mother, Cathy Lawson, has no arrest record. She works hard in a hospital cafeteria to support her children, her sister said, sometimes up to three weeks straight without a day off. Avion was never abused and was not taught violence, Lawson said.

But it wasn’t easy for Cathy Lawson as a single mother of six, said April Lawson, who raised seven children on her own. After-school activities cost money, she said, which they didn’t always have.

“That’s what is wrong,” April Lawson said. “The kids get out of school, and they have nothing to do.”

TROUBLE IN SCHOOL

Ruby Walker, 44, said her family survived on food stamps, sometimes living in abandoned cars and buildings. She has nine arrests on charges including aggravated battery and assault dating to the early 1980s.

Nathan was always slow, she said, and at 16 still has a hard time reading. He dropped out of John F. Kennedy Middle School after three years of trying to pass seventh grade, Walker said. A lot of kids were picking on him because he was old for his grade, she said, and she went to school police to ask if they could keep him from getting jumped all the time.

Walker said Nathan would try at his homework until he cried with frustration. She couldn’t help him, she said, because she often didn’t understand it herself. He eventually stopped going to school, she said.

Without a job, and bored at the family’s spare apartment west of Haverhill Road, he would sometimes go to Dunbar Village to play basketball.

Walker said her son knew Avion Lawson, who came to her house one time, but they were not close. Nathan is a sweet-hearted person, in no way capable of rape, she said. She said her son agreed to the police interview and DNA test, taking the swab of his mouth himself. Walker does not believe the police have any evidence that will implicate her son.

Her mother, Mary McNeal, said Nathan “is no leader; he is a follower.”

McNeal didn’t know who his friends were, but she suspected something was going on with him. She said he would tell her he was going to the park, but she knew he wasn’t there.

“I told him about that project,” McNeal said referring to Dunbar Village. Walker said her mother is angry at her now, because she thinks she shouldn’t have let Nathan spend time there.

Ruby Walker said she was raped herself at ages 7 and 12, and almost again this year, she said.

She said she was walking to a bus stop when a man she had never seen before attacked her, dragged her into his car and tore off some of her clothes before she escaped. Nathan and his sister came with another relative to pick her up, she said.

“He was crying. … He said, ‘I would never do that to anyone,’” she said.

She said she wants to tell the Dunbar rape victim she is so sorry for what happened, though she knows the woman may not accept her apology.

Nathan Walker Sr., a recovering alcoholic, said he wanted to be close to his son but just couldn’t.

His son had a hard time dealing with his addiction, especially because boys used to tease him about having an alcoholic father, he said. When Nathan was 4 or 5 years old, his father left home. Walker Sr. said he decided to get help about seven years ago. He was sober for two and a half years, he said, and decided to start a business. Father and son were talking again. But his business collapsed, and with it his determination.

“My son became more strange to me after the relapse,” the soft-spoken father said outside his home.

About four months ago, he decided to get help again. He kept trying to talk to his son, but Nathan was always hanging out with the boys or his girlfriend.

Two months before he was arrested, he agreed to go to Fun Depot with his father but didn’t say much.

If he had raised his boy, Walker said, things would be different. He wishes he knew more about him, but he is certain of one thing: His son doesn’t have the heart to inflict such pain.

“I do believe in my son. He has a good heart,” he said.

‘I CAN’T DEAL WITH IT’

Taylor’s family moved from Boynton Beach to West Palm Beach about three years ago, settling in Dunbar Village.

Inside their apartment in a run-down building, its doors and windows caked with dust and rust, Taylor’s mother, Jacqueline Minor, foresaw that life in the housing project could lead her son into trouble with police, said a close family friend who refused to give her name.

At some point after he was charged with the robbery near CityPlace, Taylor’s mother sent him to live with his grandmother on Windsor Avenue so he would stay out of trouble, the friend said.

He played youth basketball and football. At one point, he attended the now-defunct Oak Grove Academy, a school in Riviera Beach for students with behavioral problems.

Police linked him to the gang rape and robbery through a fingerprint at the scene, whicht they were able to match to those taken during his January arrest. Police picked him up at his mother’s apartment, just as he was about to leave for summer school, the family friend said.

“I’m just too upset,” Minor, 32, said after her son’s arrest Thursday. “I can’t deal with it.”

She did not attend her son’s first court appearance Friday.

Copyright 2007 The Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc.
Palm Beach Post (Florida)
July 15, 2007 Sunday
FINAL EDITION
SECTION: A SECTION; Pg. 1A
LENGTH: 1,568 words

By KATHLEEN CHAPMAN
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

WEST PALM BEACH – The teen who beat a 39-year-old after finding out she was a preoperative transsexual is guilty of aggravated battery but not a hate crime, Palm Beach County Juvenile Court Judge Peter Blanc ruled Monday.

The teen had been under house arrest since July 2006, when he confessed to police that he beat a transsexual who he thought was a woman.

He told Palm Beach police that he and a buddy were out to pick up girls on a Friday night when they met the 39-year-old outside a bar on Clematis Street. The teen, then 17, said she performed oral sex on him in the back seat of his friend’s car, then came with him to Palm Beach after midnight.

The teen told police that he was trying to have sex on the beach when he felt a male organ.

“And then it gets worse … like some sort of a bad movie,” the teen’s attorney, John Brewer, said in closing arguments.

She then threatened the boy, Brewer said, saying she would kill him and his family if he ruined her reputation.

Palm Beach police Sgt. Jennifer Sandman, who interviewed the teen on the morning of the incident, testified at Monday’s trial in juvenile court that he seemed arrogant and told her he beat the transsexual until his hand was sore.

He said he left to look for his cellphone in his friend’s car, then returned to beat the 39-year-old again, Sandman said.

A witness on the beach that night, a mechanic from Lake Worth, testified that the teen forced her to kneel in the sand while he punched her and slammed her head into a lifeguard stand where he was sitting. The impact shook the stand, he said.

The state of Florida elevates a charge by one degree when the defendant intentionally selects a victim because of prejudice. Blanc said Monday that he does not believe the boy was guilty as charged of a first-degree felony hate crime. The teen did not seem to beat the victim because of sexual orientation, Blanc said, but because of his anger and desire for retribution.

Blanc did not buy the teen’s argument of self-defense.

“Your anger, from your perspective and from many other people’s perspective, may be justifiable anger,” Blanc said. “But the act that you committed in that anger cannot be justified under our existing system of laws.”

Assistant State Attorney Sarah Willis stressed in her closing argument that the teen returned to the scene when he had the opportunity to leave.

The witness said the beating victim did not resist or fight back in any way. Sandman testified that the teen told her he had no injuries but “some sissy scratches.”

Florida’s Castle Doctrine law, which overturned court rulings that people had a duty to retreat from violent encounters except inside their homes, has dramatically changed the legal standard for self-defense, the judge said.

Still, Blanc said, “the court sincerely hopes that doctrine has not so changed to the extent that would justify what occurred here.”

He released the teen, now 18, from house arrest before a scheduled sentencing hearing in August, saying he could continue to work, go to summer school and travel outside the house as long as his father was with him.

Blanc will decide next month what sentence the teen will receive for the second-degree felony of aggravated battery.

The teen’s father expressed outrage in court that his son was being prosecuted and the 39-year-old has not been charged with any crime. Florida law also makes it a second-degree felony for a 39-year-old to have sex with a 16-year-old or 17-year-old victim.

Palm Beach County State Attorney’s Office spokesman Mike Edmondson said that, in general, his office rarely prosecutes sex crimes with victims approaching their 18th birthdays.

The 39-year-old in this case denies that any sexual activity took place and said she thought the boy was in his early 20s.

But Brewer said the teen is obviously younger than 20. He’s just a “vulnerable-looking stripling,” the attorney said.

The unusual case became even more so, Blanc said, because the beating victim did not appear in court to testify. The judge decided to consider testimony from police and an eyewitness as he would in a murder trial in which the victim cannot tell the story in court.

Blanc said he will take into account all of the circumstances when deciding the sentence next month.

“In many ways it appears from the testimony that was presented here that there are two victims in the case,” the judge said.

Copyright 2007 The Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc.
Palm Beach Post (Florida)
July 3, 2007 Tuesday
FINAL EDITION
SECTION: LOCAL; Pg. 3B
LENGTH: 728 words

By KATHLEEN CHAPMAN
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

The two strangers met outside a bar on Clematis Street in West Palm Beach.

One was a 17-year-old male high school student out with a buddy. The other was an attractive 39-year-old in capri pants and a silky spaghetti-strap top.

The teen says she got into their car and performed oral sex on him in the back seat while his friend drove. They ended up near a lifeguard tower on the island of Palm Beach after midnight. According to the 17-year-old, she was on top of him when he saw something he didn’t expect under her bikini bottom.

Just as they were about to have sex, he says, he saw she was actually a pre-operative transsexual. She had breast implants, but her other surgery is not scheduled until later this year.

She denies any sexual activity with the teen and has a different story. But a witness saw what happened next: The teen shouted for help, dragged her through the sand, beat her head against the lifeguard stand and punched out her front teeth.

He goes on trial this week in juvenile court, facing a first-degree felony hate crime charge that may be without precedent in Palm Beach County.

Assistant State Attorney Renelda Mack, chief of the civil rights unit, said she cannot discuss a case before trial, especially one involving a juvenile. But she does not remember another hate crime case here with a transsexual victim.

The teen, now 18 and attending summer school, has been on house arrest since the beating in the early morning of July 29, 2006. A juvenile judge will decide whether he is guilty and what punishment, if any, he will face.

His attorney, John Brewer, said he plans to argue self-defense. The 39-year-old threatened to kill the boy and his family if he told anyone what happened, Brewer said.

“Something flipped in his mind and he thought, ‘I’ve got to bring this guy in; he’s going to harm me.’” At that moment, Brewer said, the teen’s “whole world just got turned upside down. Nothing is as it seems. Everything is possible.”

He realized, “I’m in way over my head,” Brewer said.

A mechanic from Lake Worth was on the beach that night with friends. He said in a deposition that he was sitting on top of the lifeguard tower when the teen, wearing only boxer shorts, came up and asked for help.

The boy “was hysterical, freaking out, crying, upset,” the witness said.

“He said he picked up a girl, he thought it was a girl; it was a guy.”

The man had tried to rape him, the teen told the mechanic.

The witness said he suggested that the boy go home and not tell anyone. But about half an hour later, the kid returned, he said, dragging what looked to be a topless man down the beach by the hand.

He screamed that he was going to kill her and slammed the person’s head against the lifeguard stand, the witness said.

The witness jumped off the tower and headed for the boardwalk. The kid came up to him, he said, saying that he thought he had killed someone and was going to jail. Palm Beach police pulled up right then, the witness said.

They found the 39-year-old covered in blood.

The teen’s father says he is appalled by what happened and can’t believe that the state has not filed charges against the 39-year-old for sex with a minor. Florida law makes it a second-degree felony for a person 24 or older to engage in any sexual activity with a 16- or 17-year-old.

“I want to know how a 39-year-old man, disguised as a woman, was out there picking up a 17-year-old,” the father said.

The beating victim, now 40, gives a different version of events.

Though the boy said she approached him because she had locked her keys in her car and needed help, she said in her deposition that the boys invited her to a party.

She had several drinks over the course of the evening and agreed to go to the party with the two young men because she needed to sober up before driving home. She figured they were in their early 20s.

The teen came onto her aggressively, kissing her, touching her breasts and putting her face in his lap. She said she told him that she is a transsexual and denies that there was any sexual activity or that she was on top of him.

He seemed to be more upset that she rejected his sexual advances, she said, than that she was a transsexual.

The only witness to what happened before the beating, the 17-year-old’s friend, was in his own juvenile trouble and violated a court order by going out that night, Brewer said. The friend has his own lawyer and isn’t talking, Brewer said.

MIND-SET MAKES HATE CRIME

Florida law says that a crime is “aggravated by prejudice” when a perpetrator intentionally selects a victim because of a characteristic such as race, religion or ethnicity.

Bills recently passed in the U.S. House and introduced in the U.S. Senate would expand hate crime laws to include gender identity. But transsexuals are not included as a protected group under federal or Florida law. And though sexual orientation is a protected category in Florida, gender is not.

When prosecutors questioned the beating victim in her deposition, she said the teen shouted “faggot” while beating her. She thought maybe he was upset that his friend saw him kissing her and was afraid people would think he was gay.

But after living as a woman for more than a decade, she does not consider herself a gay man. She is a woman attracted to men, she said, and she has the right to go anywhere that other straight women would.

Speaking in general, Mack said prosecutors can pursue a hate crime based on the perpetrator’s mind-set, even if he was mistaken about the person’s identity.

For example, someone could be charged for painting a swastika on the driveway of someone he thought was Jewish, even if the person wasn’t.

To prove that a person acted with prejudice, prosecutors can use symbols, words that were shouted, statements to police, or even what the person was wearing, Mack said.

SHOUTED SLUR CONTESTED

In 2005, the last year for which the Florida Attorney General’s Office has data, Florida law enforcement agencies reported 206 hate crimes statewide. Arrests in Palm Beach County have included two young men who defaced a Judaica store west of Boca Raton, and juveniles who declared “Guat Day” before going out looking for Guatemalans, Mack said.

“Certainly cases may be stronger if a person sat around the table and plotted and planned,” Mack said. “But the law does not require that.”

Brewer said that this incident does not come close to the legal standard for hate crime.

The word “faggot” didn’t surface in the 39-year-old’s first interview with police or Brewer’s own interview with her. It was only when questioned by prosecutors, months after the crime, that word was used, Brewer said.

And, he said, his client did not “intentionally select” her.

The teen had no intention to meet a transsexual that night, Brewer said. And he was upset because he was deceived about the 39-year-old’s gender, not because of prejudice, Brewer said.

The beating victim said in an interview with The Palm Beach Post that she doesn’t think of herself as the victim of a hate crime. She wants the teen to face consequences for the beating, she said, but didn’t want to see him charged as an adult.

“I guess I’m a little more compassionate. … I didn’t want to destroy his life” with a felony charge in adult court, she said.

Brewer said he hopes that both parties can get on with their lives. But he is afraid they both will carry some scars from their chance meeting a year ago.

“I feel sorry for both of them,” Brewer said.

Staff researchers Niels Heimeriks and Rachel Schaff contributed to this story.

Copyright 2007 The Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc.
Palm Beach Post (Florida)
July 2, 2007 Monday
FINAL EDITION
SECTION: LOCAL; Pg. 1B
LENGTH: 1254 words

Before her arrest in March, patients and an employee of Dr. Asuncion Luyao had begun to complain about her new clientele – prescription pain pill addicts who were nodding off, passing out and, in a few cases, dealing drugs by cell phone in her waiting room.

Some said the lobby had become a “madhouse,” packed with more and more people whose only affliction seemed to be the fact that they had not bathed in days.

The descriptions of three-hour waits and crowds spilling out the door to the doctor’s office are included in some of about 100 depositions taken so far by prosecutors as they build their case against the 60-year-old Port St. Lucie doctor.

Hoping to send Luyao to prison on charges of manslaughter, racketeering and drug trafficking, prosecutors have interviewed patients who said the doctor’s prescription practices were so famously loose and unscrupulous that she attracted addicts from all over Florida.

They have uncovered a statement from Luyao, denying responsibility in the overdose death of a blackjack dealer she first met during one of her monthly cruises on a gambling boat.

And they are trying to corroborate the story of a dancer who claims that Luyao was paying a Broward County man cash to bring in new pain patients.

In more than 6,000 pages of documents released last week, witnesses for the state tell the story of a physician whose business increased with the popularity of the powerful drug OxyContin and how she became one of a handful of doctors nationwide to face homicide charges as a result.

Some have charged in sworn statements that she got legitimate chronic patients hooked on large, inappropriate doses of powerful narcotics and fed the addictions of obvious drug abusers for an $80 office fee, until they died.

“Everybody knew Dr. Luyao, I mean, that’s the truth, everybody knew you don’t have to be sick. . . . Go in there and tell her you had a headache, and I guarantee you’d come out with anything you wanted and more,” one former patient, Angela Haag, said in a sworn interview with prosecutors.

Luyao said in a deposition that it is true she had accepted patients whom other doctors had refused.

But even drug addicts deserve prescriptions for their pain, she told attorneys on March 20, six days before her arrest.

“There are a lot of people who take to the streets because nobody believes that they have pain and they have abused their medication and they are finding an alternative, which is cheaper, affordable and can make them live again,” Luyao said. “And those are people that I take care of that, quote, are drug addicts, that come in here, so that they can control their pains, can live again.”

Luyao said her prescriptions had allowed patients to rise from their wheelchairs, walk without canes.

“I am very happy for what I do for this town,” she said.

Luyao recounted talking about her medical practice at a blackjack table aboard a casino boat one night when she met Bradley Towse, who was dealing cards at her table. Luyao said she later took on the Palm Beach Gardens man as a patient and prescribed him methadone and other painkillers. She wrote those prescriptions after examinations in her office, she said, never on her monthly cruises.

“I don’t do business in the boat,” she said.

Luyao said Towse needed the narcotics for shoulder and neck pain from dealing blackjack and painful withdrawal symptoms after he stopped taking the painkiller Lorcet.

“Like I said, he was in a job where it called for him to stand up eight hours a day, OK, deal his things and pick them up this way and that caused – that can cause a lot of pain. And that’s credible enough for us people who will recognize that a lot of people have pain without some explanation,” she told lawyers for his family.

Towse was 23 years old when he died in June 2000 of an accidental drug overdose.

Luyao has not been charged in his death.

CLIENTELE CHANGED IN MID-’90s

Certified in internal medicine, Luyao moved from New York and set up practice in Port St. Lucie in 1977. For two decades, the physician saw patients with a wide range of problems – high blood pressure, diabetes – George Buchko Jr., who has worked in Luyao’s office as a medical assistant since 1987, told prosecutors in May.

Luyao said in her deposition that about five or six years ago she began to notice an increase in the number of people complaining of chronic pain, so she went to seminars to learn how to treat them.

Buchko told prosecutors he thinks it was 1995 when representatives from the pharmaceutical company Purdue Pharma first met with Luyao to tout their new drug, OxyContin. The Federal Drug Administration first approved the potent painkiller that same year.

The drug caught on gradually, Buchko said in the deposition, as Luyao’s patient load steadily began to increase. Many loyal patients followed her when she moved into a new office in a U.S. 1 shopping plaza in Port St. Lucie in 1997. But the majority of newcomers were pain patients referred by lawyers for workers compensation claims and injuries from car crashes, Buchko told prosecutors.

In early 2001, OxyContin, which is chemically similar to heroin, morphine and methadone, started gaining a local and national reputation for being widely abused. Some snorted or crushed the drug to get high, and users found that they could not quit.

“I just can’t do it, I tried, I can’t do it, this drug just takes your soul,” one of Luyao’s patients, Louis Perrotta, said in a deposition.

In June of last year, Jupiter doctor Denis Deonarine was arrested on a variety of drug trafficking charges. Assistant State Attorney Tom Bakkedahl said he has found “quite a few” people who merely switched from Deonarine to Luyao.

Business was thriving – up to 50 or 60 patients a day for the single doctor, according to Buchko’s deposition. Though the bulk of her clients came from the Treasure Coast, the patient list includes addresses in West Palm Beach, Cape Canaveral, Deerfield Beach, Miami, Davie and Tampa.

Some were not pleased with the new clientele.

“The older patients were saying, ‘George, this looks like skid row in here,’ ” Buchko told prosecutors.

Some patients complained of three-, four- and even five-hour waits alongside people they described as “buzzed,” “sedated” and “nodding out.”

Former patient Paul Bayne told prosecutors that many appeared to be in their 20s – “mostly young and I think they’re just for the drugs, myself.”

One time he waited from 1 to 6 p.m. to see the doctor.

“Once the word of mouth got out and all the kids started coming . . . that’s what the pain in the butt was, we’d have to wait.”

Some of the newer patients appeared not to have bathed for days and openly disobeyed a sign prohibiting food or drink inside, according to Buchko’s deposition.

They were “bringing these big 134-ounce mugs and I don’t know what – what was in it,” Buchko said.

When asked what Luyao thought of the change in her patients, Buchko said he couldn’t recall, exactly.

“She might have mentioned . . . ‘button your shirt up’ or something like that, you know.’”

In a few instances, patients said they overheard others using cell phones to arrange sales of their prescriptions from the waiting room. The doctor asked those people to leave, Buchko said. He also said Luyao refused to prescribe drugs for some patients, who would storm out of the office irate, refusing to pay for the office visit.

DETOX PATIENTS REFERRED OTHERS

Several patients said in sworn depositions that by 2000 and 2001 the word was out that Luyao would prescribe drugs based on patients’ reports of pain – with few questions asked.

One man said he got the idea to visit Luyao at a Narcotics Anonymous meeting, and another said he heard her name from fellow patients in drug detox.

Thomas Sikes, 36, of Fort Pierce told prosecutors he began seeing Luyao while in rehab at Savannas Hospital and Treatment Center in Port St. Lucie.

“I told her that I had back pain and, um, I asked her for Percocet and I . . . I believe I asked her for Clonidine and then I asked her for, uh, some antidepressants,” he said.

Once every month or two, he went back for more, also sampling Xanax, Viagra and OxyContin. Another man, Michael Brown, told investigators he would drive up from Coral Springs to see Luyao and get drugs after a cursory explanation. He was able to get refills for his wife, Rayanne, even when she didn’t accompany him to the appointment, he told investigators.

Two patients have claimed Luyao was not just exploited by addicts but a willing participant.

In a sworn statement, a dancer named Barbara Henderson accused Luyao of paying off a man named Dominick to bring in more customers for OxyContin. He already had about five recruits, Henderson said.

“That is absolutely a lie, totally untrue,” said Luyao’s attorney, Joel Hirschhorn of Miami.

Another woman told St. Lucie County detectives last fall that on two occasions she saw Luyao show up in a bar in the Treasure Coast dressed in a white coat and go into a back room.

The woman said in a sworn statement she believes the doctor would sell the prescriptions to the bar owner, who would in turn sell to patrons.

The allegations are “beyond laughable,” Hirschhorn said. “Give me a break.”

The problem with the state’s case, he said, is that a significant portion of its evidence rests on the statements of prescription drug abusers. They lie to protect themselves from prosecution, he said, and their memories are unreliable.

By mid- to late 2001, family members of patients who had overdosed or grown addicted to Luyao’s prescriptions began to confront the doctor and contact authorities in greater numbers.

‘SOMEONE’S GOING TO FIND OUT’

Furious when she discovered that Luyao was still prescribing OxyContin for her husband George after a year and a half of treatment, Yvette Mercado brushed past Luyao’s staff and barged into her office. Interrupting Luyao’s appointment with a patient, Mercado demanded information on her husband’s treatment. When Luyao told her she couldn’t discuss his case because of confidentiality rules, Mercado screamed at her.

“I told her . . . that someone is going to find her out,” Mercado said in an interview with prosecutors.

Some pharmacists had already stopped taking Luyao’s prescriptions, witnesses said.

None of the Kmarts in the area would fill Luyao’s requests, as she noted on a sign in her office, Buchko said, and some pharmacists at Walgreens and Eckerd also were declining them.

In December 2001, state and local investigators searched Luyao’s office, removing dozens of patient files.

A Florida Department of Health investigation found that, in some cases, Luyao had prescribed drugs after inadequate, superficial exams and with little explanation. On March 22, state investigators suspended her license. She was arrested four days later. Luyao is out of jail on bond and living at her Port St. Lucie home as she waits for trial.

In their interview with Buchko this May, prosecutors told the medical assistant that of 50 or 60 patient files they had seized and reviewed, the vast majority contained no medical records at all.

“I want to know where they are,” a prosecutor told him.

Buchko couldn’t say.

“You’d have to ask the doctor,” Buchko replied.

Copyright 2002 Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc.
Palm Beach Post (Florida)
June 30, 2002 Sunday
FINAL EDITION
SECTION: A SECTION, Pg. 1A
LENGTH: 1898 words

For more than six years, a St. Lucie County detective tracked the woman authorities called the “Chameleon,” a fugitive who travelled the world under at least 10 aliases, morphing into different women with fluctuating body weight and changing hair colors.

Detective Sgt. David Brooks wanted to ask the woman, 59-year-old Elaine Antoinette Parent, about the 1990 murder of a Broward County woman, Beverly Ann McGowan, whose body was found west of Fort Pierce. Parent used McGowan’s name to book a flight to England in the week after McGowan’s grisly death.

On Saturday night, authorities found Parent in Panama City.

Parent shot herself through the heart after police officers arrived at her door, on a tip they got from the television show America’s Most Wanted.

The television show aired at 9 p.m., describing the case that had long gone cold and displaying photographs of Parent – similar only in her sharp chin and lazy right eyelid.

Panama City police got the call about an hour later from America’s Most Wanted representative, telling them that neighbors reported that the woman was likely living near St. Andrews Bay, in an affluent, historic neighborhood, Cmdr. Mitchell Pitts said.

A sergeant and two police officers went to the home at 449 S. MacArthur Ave., with a cover story saying they had gotten a 911 call from that address, and wanted to make sure that everything was all right, Pitts said.

POLICE DIDN’T RECOGNIZE PARENT

Parent came out wearing silky beige pajamas, and handed the officers a military identification card with the name Darlene Thompson. The woman with bleached blonde hair and thick glasses looked nothing like the pictures the officers had downloaded from the Internet. They saw no signs of the tiny mole under her eye or the scar on her left thumb mentioned on the show’s Web site.

They thought they had the wrong woman, Pitts said.

Parent agreed to talk with the officers, but said she needed to change. She closed the door to her room.

Then officer Michael Kratz, who had been in the military, noticed that the picture seemed wrong – it had a different background and shape than the picture on his own card. It looked like an old passport photo that had been superimposed on someone else’s card, Pitts said.

When the officers knocked on her bedroom door, Parent shot herself in the chest with a .357 Magnum.

She died in the spare bedroom that she had rented since August, before detectives could ask any questions, Pitts said.

Among her few personal belongings was a clipping from the Panama City News Herald, describing the new airport security cameras that could identify suspects by their facial features.

St. Lucie County Sheriff Ken Mascara said Brooks and state attorney’s investigator Nora Pfeiffer flew to Panama City on Monday. They identified Parent through the fingerprints they had on file.

After years of investigation, authorities knew, among other things, that Parent was a lesbian who loved P.D. James crime novels and sometimes faked a British accent, according to the America’s Most Wanted Web site. She was wanted for stealing $40,000 worth of jewelry from an elderly acquaintance in 1985. Authorities said she used astrology and numerology to trick her victims into giving her birthdates and other information she used to steal their identities.

But they do not know if she may have been involved in any other deaths, or when and how she came to Panama City. And though they have long suspected that at least one person helped Parent kill McGowan, they do not know who her accomplice might have been.

They are now looking for clues about Parent’s past in bank statements, travel records and other personal belongings and anything that might link her other deaths, Mascara said.

Parent was working as a real estate agent in Miami when she met her victim, possibly through an ad for a roommate. McGowan, a 34-year-old bank employee from Pompano Beach, disappeared on July 17, 1990, after quitting her job and telling her brother Steve that she planned to travel. She hinted that her roommate, who she called “Alice,” but detectives believe was actually Parent, had inspired the change.

Two days later, on July 19, a fisherman found a body on the bank of the C-24 Canal west of Fort Pierce, with the head, hands and a tattoo cut off so it would be difficult to establish the woman’s identity. Through a piece of her jaw and one remaining tattoo of a yellow rose, police identified the woman as McGowan. On July 23, a woman tried to use one of McGowan’s credit cards to book a flight from Miami to England and rent a car at Heathrow airport in London. But her brother had cancelled her credit card, so the woman paid cash.

PARENT’S PAST STILL A MYSTERY

Three months after the murder, in October 1990, Parent flew to Los Angeles and rented a car under the name Charlotte Cowan. Parent was arrested in Miami-Dade County seven months later, on the charge of failing to return a leased vehicle. She posted bail and was released before police realized her true identity.

The last time anybody saw her was 1994, when she was working in Nashville as a clerk at Sears, according to the America’s Most Wanted Web site.

St. Lucie County detectives listed Parent as their key suspect in 1995, when they discovered that the name of a woman on a July 23, 1990, British Airways flight from Miami to Heathrow – Sylvia Ann Hodgkinson – was an alias often used by Parent. And though the woman had flown under the name Hodgkinson, she had booked the flight as Beverly Ann McGowan.

A year later, the St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office released her name to the media, in hopes that it would generate new tips. But the leads ultimately ended, Mascara said. An episode of 20/20 in 1999 dedicated to the murder failed to generate many more useful leads.

Mascara said he happened to be flipping through the channels Saturday night when he saw a local investigator from the state attorney’s office talking about the case. He had no idea America’s Most Wanted had picked up the story.

Though Parent is now dead, Mascara said he now hopes Parent’s possessions can tell part of the story of her past.

Saturday’s events, though grim, were “really a godsend,” he said.

Staff researcher Monica Martinez contributed to this story.

Copyright 2002 Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc.
Palm Beach Post (Florida)
April 9, 2002 Tuesday
MARTIN-ST. LUCIE EDITION
SECTION: A SECTION, Pg. 1A
LENGTH: 1059 words

PORT ST. LUCIE – A medical doctor with a cash-only payment policy, $63,000 in cash in her file cabinets, and patients from Sebastian to Coral Springs was arrested Tuesday on fraud and drug trafficking charges after a 10-month investigation found she prescribed powerful painkillers without examining patients in some cases.

A combination of medicines prescribed by the doctor, Asuncion Luyao, caused or contributed to the deaths of 12 patients, according to Treasure Coast Medical Examiner Roger Mittleman. The Florida Department of Health has suspended Luyao’s medical license in response to Mittleman’s findings and other evidence that she did not properly screen or test patients.

Luyao, 61, has not been charged with murder because officials have not proven that Luyao’s inappropriate prescriptions of OxyContin and other painkillers were directly responsible for the deaths of those patients, State Attorney Bruce Colton said Tuesday. But he said the state is still investigating and might file more charges, up to murder.

As law enforcement officers hauled more medical records from Luyao’s office Tuesday afternoon, Lynne Peterson lingered outside the strip mall office in the Village Green Plaza shopping center, hoping to see the woman she believes contributed to the drug addiction of her 23-year-old son, Stephen “Joey” Snyder of Jensen Beach, who killed himself with a gun in December.

Luyao continued prescribing medicine to her son who, she said, had a drug addiction but no serious physical problems, Peterson said.

“That kind of a doctor isn’t a doctor,” she said. “She is a drug dealer.”

Luyao’s attorney, Barry Heisler, was out of the office Tuesday and could not be reached for comment.

Investigators said a search of Luyao’s offices in December turned up the $63,000 in cash and multiple bottles of controlled substances marked with patients’ names, according to the arrest warrant affidavit. Luyao told investigators she had collected the money from patients during normal office visits.

Law enforcement officials said the probe into Luyao’s business began about 10 months ago with undercover investigators visiting her office to ask for OxyContin. The controversial painkiller, used legally by many patients to treat severe chronic pain, is also abused by some who crush the drug to eliminate its normal time-release function, and snort the powder for a high.

On July 11, the St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office arrested 24 people during a drug sting on charges that they abused or sold prescription painkillers, mostly OxyContin. Many told investigators they had gotten the drugs from Luyao, saying she “did not require any documentation or testing to verify the need for medications,” according to the arrest warrant affidavit.

Luyao, who graduated from the University of Santo Tomas in the Philippines in 1965, according to state records, attracted patients from all over South Florida. Luyao always had a full waiting room, investigators said, and once had a line of patients standing outside her door in the rain.

Undercover detectives paid from $75 to $135 per visit to Luyao, said Lt. David Thompson, who led a special investigation unit from the St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office. The doctor had a policy that patients could pay only with cash, he said.

Evidence from that search, along with interviews of several patients, helped lead to her arrest on 14 charges, including racketeering, sale and delivery of methadone, four counts of Medicaid fraud, seven counts of trafficking in oxycodone and one count of trafficking in hydrocodone. If convicted, Luyao would face a minimum of 25 years in prison for each trafficking charge, Colton said. Investigators charged her at her office around 1:30 p.m. Tuesday, then booked her at the St. Lucie County jail, where she was being held Tuesday night on more than $2 million bail.

Peterson said her son Joey told her before his death that it was widely known among local kids that Luyao would freely prescribe drugs to anyone who asked. After drug rehabilitation failed to end his addiction, he even tried reporting Luyao to state officials himself, in the hope that her arrest could remove the temptation, Peterson said.

On Dec. 12, after a day trip to a water park with his mother, the Martin County High graduate shot himself, ending a long struggle with addiction. His mother found two prescriptions from Luyao, for Xanax and a strong painkiller called Dilaudid. The drugs had been prescribed the week before he died, the same week law enforcement officials served the search warrant at Luyao’s office.

“I lived with him every day. He did not need painkillers,” Peterson said.

Though she said she knows the reasons for her son’s suicide are complicated, she believes Luyao’s willingness to give him drugs contributed to his death.

“Is she directly responsible for his death? No. But without those prescriptions, he might be alive today,” Peterson said.

In addition to the criminal charges, Luyao is also facing a civil malpractice lawsuit on behalf of Julia Hartsfield, a former patient who died from a drug overdose in April 2001. Miami Lakes attorney Daniel Kaufman, who is representing the family, said that Hartsfield’s husband, Robert, went to Luyao in June 2000, asking her to stop prescribing painkillers for his wife, who had become addicted, Kaufman said.

“They were seeing an unending amount of prescriptions being given, and an alarming number of pills being taken,” he said.

According to court documents, Luyao has denied those allegations.

Another one of Luyao’s patients, Tina Smith of Indian River County, died from a drug overdose last summer at the age of 27. Her mother, Connie Velie, found her unconscious, her 2-year-old daughter answering her phone.

Luyao had gradually increased her dosage of OxyContin, without trying to find the cause of the woman’s pain, said the family’s lawyer, Philip DeBerard. On July 10, three days before the woman died, Luyao increased her monthly dosage to 120 tablets of 80 milligrams each.

Luyao “never got the medical records, never got the test results, just gave her the prescription refill,” DeBerard said.

He said that he has notified Luyao of his intent to sue on behalf of Smith and three other former patients.

The Port St. Lucie doctor has consistently been one of Florida’s top prescribers of OxyContin for Medicaid patients. The state paid about $935,634 worth of OxyContin for 1,611 of Luyao’s prescriptions since January 1999, according to Medicaid records. In 2000, she billed Medicaid for 359 prescriptions of OxyContin for a total of $184,340.

Those numbers far exceed those of of Denis Deonarine, a Jupiter doctor who is awaiting trial on charges including murder in the OxyContin-related death of one of his patients. In 2000, Deonarine wrote 101 prescriptions worth $36,899. Another Florida doctor, James Graves of Pensacola, became the first doctor convicted of manslaughter in an OxyContin-related death in February, when a jury found him culpable for the deaths of four of his patients.

Luyao continued to bill Medicaid in “outrageous” amounts up until her arrest this week, said Steven Kogan, regional chief of the attorney general’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit. From Dec. 6, the date the search warrant was executed, until Tuesday, Luyao wrote 282 OxyContin prescriptions for Medicaid patients, Kogan said.

“She never slowed down,” he said.

Staff writer Sanjay Bhatt contributed to this story.

Copyright 2002 Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc.
Palm Beach Post (Florida)
March 27, 2002 Wednesday
FINAL EDITION
SECTION: A SECTION, Pg. 1A
LENGTH: 1260 words

PORT ST. LUCIE – An undercover St. Lucie County Sheriff’s deputy in his mid-20s attended two Port St. Lucie high schools for the past six months, struggling through algebra, going to parties and gathering information that led to the arrest of 16 students Wednesday, most on drug charges.

Sheriff Ken Mascara said the undercover case, named Operation Safe Kid, was the first of its kind in St. Lucie County and will expand to other district schools. He initiated the program last summer after hearing parents complain that kids at local schools “were doing everything but learning.”

With a fictitious address and law enforcement officers posing as parents, the deputy registered for his senior year at Port St. Lucie High at the beginning of the school year as a transfer student, then moved to St. Lucie West Centennial High after the holiday break.

St. Lucie County schools Superintendent Bill Vogel was the only district official who knew the deputy’s identity – teachers, counselors, even principals all believed he was a real student. He took African-American history, pottery, P.E. and algebra, Mascara said, relying on other deputies to help him with frustrating math problems.

“The algebra was really kicking his butt,” Mascara said.

The unnamed deputy, a convincing-looking 18, hung out with students during and after school, carefully documenting the classmates who sold him marijuana, ecstasy and cocaine.

At Centennial, a 17-year-old student from Port St. Lucie led the deputy to an off-campus meeting with James Emery Clark, 23, of 365 Airoso Blvd., who offered to sell him a .38-caliber pistol with its serial number scratched off. Clark was arrested Wednesday on drug and weapons charges, authorities said.

Teams of deputies went to the two schools Wednesday morning, where administrators quietly pulled the suspects from class and walked them to conference rooms. They were told they could call their parents and were notified of the charges against them, which included possession of ecstasy, unlawfully filling a prescription, sale and delivery of cocaine, and cultivation of marijuana.

Sixteen students were arrested, all charged with at least one felony, and deputies were looking for three more Wednesday night.

“I think they were all in shock,” Chief Deputy Garry Wilson said.

But the charges, which reflect crime patterns school resource officers have seen for years, were not news to anyone in law enforcement or the schools.

“I am disappointed, but not really surprised,” Centennial Principal James Sullivan said.

His school reported 30 incidents of alcohol, drugs and tobacco on campus during the past school year. Port St. Lucie High reported 69.

Principals told teachers at the end of the school day Wednesday and sent letters home with students explaining Operation Safe Kid and that the schools were selected randomly from the district’s five high schools.

The letter asked parents to talk with their children about the consequences of illegal activities.

Sullivan said he hopes the sheriff’s office will continue placing undercover deputies in the schools without notifying school officials. They can help keep students safe by alerting authorities when they hear the first rumors of possible violence, he said.

Students had mixed reactions to the disguised deputy.

“I thought it was a good idea because they caught a lot of people,” Port St. Lucie High freshman Timothy Clinton said on his way home from school. Students know there are problems with drugs on campus, he said.

But student Maritza Aguilera disagreed, saying that even though the deputies have to catch offenders, doing so secretly could violate students’ trust.

“It’s kind of like an invasion of privacy,” she said. “Maybe one of your best friends, would be like, an undercover working for the school or something.”

Of the 16 students arrested Wednesday, three from Port St. Lucie are over 18: James Edward Kumas, charged with possession and sale of MDMA, also known as ecstasy; Joe Catalano, on the same charges; and John Conrad Goodbred, charged with sale and delivery of marijuana.

Clark was the only non-student arrested.

Vogel said he hopes the revelation that students have been mingling with a deputy will inspire a healthy sense of paranoia. The belief that any student could be an agent of the sheriff’s office will make them more reluctant to deal drugs, he said.

Mascara was especially proud of the deputy’s endurance, working long hours to perform two jobs, one as a student, one as a deputy.

“Let’s face it, high school was tough enough the first time around,” Wilson said.

Even so, the deputy did well enough in his classes, Mascara said.

“He was passing everything the last time we got a report card.”

Copyright 2002 Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc.
Palm Beach Post (Florida)
March 21, 2002 Thursday
MARTIN-ST. LUCIE EDITION
SECTION: A SECTION, Pg. 1A
LENGTH: 802 words

PORT ST. LUCIE – A troop of Junior Girl Scouts has learned a harsh lesson about the grown-up business world: When you sell people cookies, check the color of their money.

In this case, it turned out to be counterfeit – the first case that city police can recall where someone ripped off a Girl Scout cookie sale using funny money.

Jennifer Bozone, leader of Port St. Lucie Troop 276, said she was helping several fourth- through sixth-graders sell cookies outside the Winn Dixie on Port St. Lucie Boulevard on Friday evening when she noticed two $20 bills were made of yellowish paper.

The bills had identical serial numbers and no water marks, according to the police report.

The brazen cookie theft made Police Chief John Skinner so mad that he offered to cover the troop’s loss with $40 of his own money, police spokesman Chuck Johnson said Tuesday.

“This really crossed him wrong,” Johnson said.

Bozone told police she remembers two middle-aged people who used the fake money.

The first was a woman with long dark hair, dressed in a nursing uniform, who used the phony $20 to buy three boxes of $3 cookies.

A few minutes later, a man used an identical fake bill, she said.

The thieves got $15 of cookies and $25 in change. But that’s not the point, said Johnson, explaining that they preyed on girls in a program designed to instill morals.

“Using counterfeit money for Girl Scout cookies? Give me a break,” he said.

Initially, the girls “couldn’t believe that somebody would on purpose try to hurt them,” Bozone said.

But they’ve learned their lesson. And lost some of their innocence.

Now, they are examining every bill for validity.

Copyright 2002 Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc.
Palm Beach Post (Florida)
January 23, 2002 Wednesday
FINAL EDITION
SECTION: A SECTION, Pg. 1A
LENGTH: 285 words