Around the state

Boy declared plan to kill dad, schoolmate testifies

PENSACOLA -- One of two adolescent boys who murdered their father with a baseball bat had talked about doing it more than a week earlier, a schoolmate testified Monday at the trial of a family friend accused of aiding the brothers.

Ricky Chavis is charged with evidence tampering and accessory after the fact to the murder of Terry King, 40. King's sons, Alex and Derek King, were 12 and 13 when they beat him to death with an aluminum baseball bat on Nov. 26, 2001, at their home in nearby Cantonment.

The state offered the testimony of Jason Gaylard, 13, to show the killing was a premeditated first-degree murder, although the King boys pleaded guilty to a lesser crime, third-degree murder.

If Chavis is convicted of being an accessory to first-degree, he could face a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison. The maximum for tampering is five years.

As the King boys were getting off the school bus one day, Derek made a parting comment to the other students, Jason testified.

"He said they were going to be gone for a while and we were going to hear about them because they were going to kill their dad and then they were going to come back and kill us."

Chavis is accused of taking the King brothers to his Pensacola home after the murder, washing their clothes and hiding them from police.

Chavis, 41, was acquitted last year of first-degree murder and convicted last month of falsely imprisoning Alex, but that jury declined to find him guilty on more serious charges of kidnapping and molesting the boy.

High-speed rail panel hears bidders' proposals

TALLAHASSEE -- The Florida High Speed Rail Authority listened Monday to brief presentations from three of the four companies that submitted bids last month to build a high-speed train in Florida.

"It's going to be many months before we complete the analysis and pick the winner," Fred Dudley, chairman, said afterward.

The nine-member panel has to wait for more money from the Legislature as well as completion of environmental studies this summer, Dudley said. That should clear the way for selection of a preferred proposal in October.

In 2000, voters ordered the state to start construction of a statewide high-speed train by November 2003. State lawmakers created the authority to begin the planning process and directed that the first leg of the train go from Orlando to Tampa and then Tampa to St. Petersburg.

Bids were submitted by Global Rail Consortium, a group led by a Korean company and the Arcadis design and engineering firm; Fluor-Bombardier, a joint effort by two firms with practical experience in bullet trains; Georgia Monorail, which is also trying to build a bullet train system in Vietnam, and ET3.com, the brainchild of a Crystal River man who claims that vacuum tubes and magnetic levitation technology could whisk capsules containing passengers at speeds up to 3,000 mph.

No one represented ET3.com before the panel Monday.

Several lawmakers are in favor of asking voters to repeal their mandate as too costly and are offering bills to that effect in the Legislature convening today.

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