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Status of Cuban family on car boat still in limbo

MIAMI - A Cuban family caught at sea on a floating 1959 Buick will be safe from return to Cuba for at least two more days, a judge decided Monday.

U.S. District Judge Federico Moreno extended an order while attorneys for the federal government and the family continue to examine immigration law and policies. Moreno hopes to rule Wednesday.

Luis Grass Rodriguez, his wife and 4-year-old son are among 11 people found on the Buick off the Florida Keys last week. Assistant U.S. Attorney Dexter Lee said the Coast Guard may be in a position to repatriate the other eight today.

Grass Rodriguez and his family are exempt, for now, from being sent back to Cuba because he had started a process in the hopes of emigrating legally to the United States after a similar attempt to flee Cuba failed last summer.

He owned a 1951 Chevrolet pickup, mounted on pontoons, which came within 40 miles of the U.S. coast in July before immigration officials spotted the vehicle and sent the group home.

U.S. policy normally allows Cubans to stay only if they reach U.S. soil; those intercepted at sea are sent back to Cuba by the U.S. Coast Guard.

ORANGE PARK - A man and his former wife are charged with giving large amounts of alcohol to a disabled woman and sexually molesting her. The woman later died.

Robert Thomas Harvey, 47, of Hawthorne, and his former wife, Linda Kay Harvey, 41, of Orange Park, were charged with sexual battery of a helpless and mentally defective person with multiple perpetrators, said Capt. Rick Ryan, a spokesman for the Putnam County Sheriff's Office. If convicted, they could face life in prison. They were arrested and jailed last week.

The body of Mary Lonnie Nelson, 31, was found lying outside her home in Orange Park last April, Clay County sheriff's spokeswoman Mary Justino said. She had a blood alcohol level of 0.38 percent, almost five times Florida's legal limit for driving, but a medical examiner was unable to rule on a cause of death, Justino said.

Investigators think the couple gave Nelson an excessive amount of alcohol at Robert Harvey's home and performed sexual acts on her. Nelson died a short time later, investigators said. The Harveys then drove her body back to her home and dumped it, officials said.

Nelson was a stepsister to Linda Harvey.

"This behavior of theirs is so awful, you're never going to be able to justify it," Justino said.