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Brink's manager arrested in seizure of Brink's truck

NEW SMYRNA BEACH - A manager of a Brink's office and a friend were arrested Tuesday and accused of trying to rob an armored Brink's truck driving from Jacksonville to Tampa.

Jose Alfaya, 31, a manager at a Brink's Tampa office, and Victor Moscoso, 34, of Miami, were arrested.

A New Smyrna Beach police officer became suspicious when he saw the armored vehicle parked off a dirt road near Interstate 95 in New Smyrna Beach, said Special Agent Jeff Westcott, an FBI spokesman in Jacksonville.

When the officer approached the vehicle, Alfaya and Moscoso came out, as did four Brink's employees who were driving the truck when it was allegedly commandeered on westbound Interstate 4 between Daytona Beach and Orlando. The truck was on the return leg of a round trip from Tampa to Jacksonville.

The four employees were questioned and released.

Authorities also were searching for two other men thought to be part of the robbery. No money was missing, Westcott said. He would not say how much money was involved.

ORLANDO - A hospital worker accidentally cut off part of a newborn baby's toe while removing a security sensor tag.

The infant, born over the weekend, was about to be discharged with her mother from Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children & Women Monday when a hospital worker told the mother what had happened.

"She said she nipped her pinky toe, and when I looked her toe was cut all the way off," Sheketa Simmons told WFTV in Orlando.

But hospital spokesman Joe Brown said only the tip of the middle toe was cut off.

Doctors at another surgical center reattached the toe part and were waiting to see if it healed properly, family members said.

The hospital worker was placed on administrative leave pending an internal investigation, said Dr. Mark Swanson, chairman of the pediatrics department.

FORT LAUDERDALE - The president-elect of the Broward County Pharmacy Association, two other South Florida pharmacists and a doctor were charged Tuesday with trafficking in prescription painkillers.

Seth Mahler, 50, of Plantation, elected last month to head the pharmacy group, was charged along with pharmacists Jason R. Villano, 29, of Oakland Park, and Julius Seiler, 49, of Coral Springs, with trafficking in controlled substances. The pharmacists allegedly filled bogus prescriptions for OxyContin and Percocet, powerful painkillers, and other such drugs submitted by Theodore Racciatti, 74, an osteopath who practices in North Miami Beach. Racciatti was charged with multiple counts of trafficking and conspiracy to traffic in prescription drugs for allegedly selling the bogus prescriptions in exchange for cash.

The arrests of Mahler and the others "was a surprise," said Steve Pressman, a past president of the Broward County Pharmacy Association. "It's all just allegations right now. If there is a conviction, we would have to get another president."