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© St. Petersburg Times, published October 18, 2002
Tons of fertilizer stolen from Disney
ORLANDO -- Authorities are investigating the theft of nearly six tons of turf fertilizer from a Walt Disney World maintenance depot.
Sometime between late September and Oct. 8, 237 bags of the turf supplement worth $2,957 went missing from the maintenance compound. The bags were part of a 22-ton shipment received on Sept. 26.
The brand-name fertilizer is the type kept at hardware stores for residential use. Investigators were told by the manufacturer that this mixture is not hazardous and is not the type used to make explosives.
FORT PIERCE -- A man serving a life sentence for raping his infant son has been accused of plotting to kill the judge and prosecutor in his court case.
Francisco Beltran, 31, sought to obtain pipe bombs with the intent of using them to kill Circuit Judge Mark Speiser and Assistant State Attorney Dennis Siegel, according to an affidavit. Beltran was sentenced to life, plus two 25-year sentences, by Speiser in January 1996.
Beltran gave an undercover informant $200 as a down payment for the murders and promised another $800 after the court officers were killed, the affidavit states.
FORT LAUDERDALE -- State Sen. Mandy Dawson said she may enter rehabilitation for a habit-forming prescription painkiller after being arrested last week on a prescription fraud charge.
"I am neither ashamed nor reluctant to seek such help should it be deemed necessary," Dawson said Wednesday in a statement.
Dawson, a Fort Lauderdale Democrat, was charged Friday with obtaining and attempting to obtain controlled substances by fraud, a third-degree felony carrying a maximum sentence of five years in prison. She would automatically be removed from the Senate if she is convicted of the felony charge.
The ashes of Aileen Wuornos, a prostitute who killed six men, will be scattered Sunday among walnut trees by a childhood friend in Michigan. Wuornos was executed by lethal injection in Florida on Oct. 9.
Dawn Botkins, who had been friends with Wuornos since the two were 15-year-old high school dropouts in Troy, Mich., visited with Wuornos the night before her execution and took her ashes back to Michigan.
TALLAHASSEE -- A 7-year-old in Alachua County has contracted West Nile virus and is believed to have gotten it through the transfusion of a blood product, state officials said Thursday.
The child is alive but is not being identified due to patient confidentiality, state epidemiologist Steven Wiersma said.
West Nile, carried by mosquitoes, can be fatal, but none of the other 12 people who contracted it this year in Florida has died.
BARTOW -- The parents of a 16-year-old boy who hanged himself in 1998 at Polk County's Sheriff's boot camp will receive $240,000 from the county, the state and a private health care company for their son's death.
Chad Franza of Avon Park hanged himself from an air conditioning vent with his boot laces Aug. 17, 1998. He had been in the six-month military-style program in Bartow for 24 days.
MIAMI -- Indian ruins recovered from a downtown Miami construction site will go on public display for the first time today. The exhibit at the Historical Museum of Southern Florida features more than 100 artifacts found near the mouth of the Miami River in November 1998. Archaeologists believe the artifacts are 2,000 years old and indicate the area was used by Tequesta Indians. The area, known as the Miami Circle, is a 38-foot circle that Tequestas are believed to have carved into the limestone.
-- Wire and Ledger reports.