PORT ST. LUCIE - A Stuart man whose ex-girlfriend had a restraining order against him tried to coax their 6-year-old son into stabbing her, police said.
Edward Munao, 38, was being held Wednesday in the St. Lucie County Jail on $250,000 bail, charged with solicitation to commit first-degree murder.
His former girlfriend, Jodi Walsh, 34, told police that her son had called his father in mid November complaining that she wouldn't let him watch television, according to a police report. The boy later told her that Munao "told him to kill her by stabbing her."
Walsh taped phone conversations with her son and Munao, with permission of the court. The boy called Munao on Nov. 18 because his mother told him to take a shower instead of watching television.
"You know what you have to do, I told you what you have to do," Munao said.
Munao then said, "Go to the kitchen," but the child cut him off and said, "No."
According to the report, Munao eventually asked, "Do you want me to kill her for you?" The child yelled, "No, do something else."
Ousted state employee sues over drug testing
TALLAHASSEE - A 17-year state government employee is suing the Department of Juvenile Justice, alleging its year-and-a-half-old policy of randomly testing any employee for drugs without a warrant violates the U.S Constitution.
Roderick Wenzel, who has worked as a manager at the department's Tallahassee headquarters for four years after 13 years in other state government jobs, sued the agency Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Tallahassee seeking unspecified monetary damages.
Wenzel was fired as manager of long range performance planning in September, a little over a year after the department became the only state agency to begin random drug testing of any employee. Wenzel had refused to take the test. Attorneys for Wenzel and the American Civil Liberties Union, say the requirement for random testing without suspicion of drug use violates the Fourth Amendment protection from unreasonable search and seizure when the employer requiring the testing is a government agency.
Courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, have held that government employees in safety-sensitive positions - such as railroad workers or police who carry guns - can be randomly drug tested.
But for others, probable cause to believe drug use has occurred is needed, Wenzel's lawyers contend.
Texas couple killed in Volusia plane crash
DAYTONA BEACH - A small plane crashed Wednesday in a heavily wooded area, killing two Texas residents.
The victims were Bill Meazell, 62, of Nacogdoches, Texas, and his 64-year-old wife, Muriel, said Gary Davidson, a spokesman for the Volusia County Sheriff's Office. They were in a Texas-bound Piper Malibu Meridian when it crashed in a remote, swampy section of the Tiger Bay Wildlife Management Area outside Daytona Beach.
The crash occurred moments after the plane lifted off from the nearby Spruce Creek Fly-In community near Port Orange, about 20 miles away, where the couple had a home.
Police sergeant resists call for his resignation
PENSACOLA - A police sergeant will fight a move to fire him over alleged connections to his wife's strip club, which played a leading role in the dismissal of Mike Price as the University of Alabama's football coach.
Police Chief John Mathis said Tuesday that he will ask Sgt. Greg Sievers to resign and recommend that the city's civil service board fire him if he refuses.
Sievers' wife, Arety, owns Arety's Angels, a strip club that Price visited in April. Price lost his job when reports surfaced that he spent hundreds of dollars at the bar and a woman ordered about $1,000 in food and charged it to his hotel bill the next morning.
State law prevents law enforcement officers from having an interest in businesses that sell alcohol.
A pre-termination letter alleges Sievers performed maintenance at the club, inquired about a permit card for a former officer who wanted to work there and is listed on the building's mortgage.
