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Three held in killing of man in $1.10 robbery

IMMOKALEE - Two men and a 14-year-old boy were arrested in the slaying of a man who was robbed of a dollar and a dime, which one suspect then spent on ice cream, Collier County deputies said.

Another teenager, who investigators think shot the man, is being sought. Detectives say he told his accomplices as they planned the crime that he wanted to prove he had the heart to shoot someone.

The name of the victim was withheld pending notification of family, the Collier County Sheriff's Office said Thursday.

Being held on first-degree murder charges without bail are Marco Antonio Garcia, 14, of Tampa, and Joyrell Leon Reed, 21, and Brent Lee Falcon, 19, both of Immokalee. The suspect still at large wasn't named.

Deputies said the victim was shot in the head in the woods near a small grocery store last Friday afternoon. Witnesses said the man had only a dollar and a dime in his pocket and begged the suspects not to hurt him. Falcon later bought ice cream with the money, investigators said.

Investigators made the arrests after getting a tip that one of the suspects bragged about the crime.

HIALEAH - This Miami suburb where Spanish dominates has a higher percentage of residents who speak a foreign language than any other U.S. city with a population of more than 100,000, the Census Bureau says.

About 93 percent of Hialeah's 228,000 residents speak a language other than English, edging Laredo, Texas, where the figure is 92 percent.

About 75 percent of Miami residents speak a foreign language, placing it eighth on the list.

CORAL GABLES - A teacher and her aide were arrested Thursday on child abuse charges based on five first-graders' claims that they were punished by having their hands, head or mouth taped.

The four boys and a girl, all age 6, said teacher's aide Ivonne Nieves bound them at various times, and that teacher Vonda Christie saw it but did nothing, police said.

One boy said he was bound with tape to his chair and to the blackboard. Other pupils said their ankles were taped together, their arms taped to their lap or their heads taped to the blackboard. The girl said her mouth was taped shut. Police did not release the children's names.

Nieves, 31, and Christie, 38, both face five counts of child abuse. Nieves also is charged with five counts of false imprisonment.

Nieves, a volunteer aide, has been told not to return to work in the Miami-Dade school system. Christie was placed on administrative assignment, and officials said Thursday they were still considering what action to take.

Yery Marrero, an attorney for Nieves, said the allegations "are simply untrue ... motivated by people who simply want money out of it." Kristi Kassebaum, an attorney for Christie, said her client is "100 percent innocent."

TALLAHASSEE - A state election official fired because of an allegation she backdated late-filed campaign finance reports will not face charges because prosecutors found she didn't try to change original documents as was alleged.

Bureau of Elections Records chief Connie Evans was fired in August after she was accused in an internal review of changing the dates on campaign finance reports in the 2002 election to make it look as though they had been submitted on time.

Prosecutors agreed with Evans' attorney that she did not alter the actual forms; rather, she changed computer records related to letters that had never gone out to 38 candidates who filed late reports last year, informing them of fines.

"There was no attempt to change or alter the original official documents consisting of financial statements with postmarked envelopes," C.W. Goodwin, the chief assistant state attorney for the Tallahassee area, wrote Thursday in a letter to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

Officials from the Secretary of State's office couldn't be reached to determine whether Evans will have a chance to get her job back.