FLAGLER BEACH - It didn't make it across the Atlantic, but 7-year-old Dylan Goodman got a long-distance answer to a message put in a bottle that was thrown in the ocean.
By Wire services
Published May 3, 2004
His floating note sent March 4 said: "Hi. My name is Dylan. I'm 7 years old and if you find this message, please write back."
A reply postmarked in Jork, Germany, several weeks later, had the first-grader, his family and friends wondering how the bottle could have made the 4,637-mile journey. What the message didn't say was that the bottle made only a short trip.
"I found the bottle in Flagler Beach," said Sybille Lohse, who answered the youngster's note. "We stay seven months in Germany, five months in Flagler Beach," she said. "I found the bottle in the middle of March. We go back to Germany end of March."
The reality was disappointing to Dylan's mom, Kelly Goodman. "In a way, I wish we never knew that," she said Saturday. "But I guess the mystery is solved."
Deputy dies in crash responding to 911 call
PALM VALLEY - A St. Johns County deputy died Sunday after he crashed his patrol car on a wet road while responding to a 911 call, officials said.
Joshua Edwin Blyler, 20, died at Shands Jacksonville Hospital about two hours after the 3:19 a.m. accident, said Florida Highway Patrol Lt. Bill Leeper.
Blyler, a Jacksonville native who joined the force in August, is the first St. Johns deputy to die in the line of duty in 21 years.
Blyler was driving his marked patrol car in a non-emergency mode, without blue lights or a siren, when he lost control, struck a mailbox, drove into a drainage ditch, began to overturn and struck a tree and power pole, police said.
Investigators do not know how fast Blyler was driving. He had been dispatched to a theft call, but was diverted to a 911 call in which the caller hung up.
An emergency operator called back the number and got a busy signal. After the crash, Jacksonville Beach police went to the home but found no trouble, a sheriff's office spokesman told the Florida Times-Union.
Body found amid search for missing mom, infant
JACKSONVILLE - Authorities seeking a missing mother and her baby will try to identify a body found in a remote part of Alachua County, a Jacksonville sheriff's officer said.
Acting on a tip in the search for Lynda Jean Wilkes, 40, and her 10-month-old son Jay-Quan Mosley, an adult body was found Friday on hunting club property about 55 miles southwest of their Jacksonville home.
The Duval County Medical Examiner transported the decomposed body to Jacksonville. It could take a week or more to identify the body, Jacksonville sheriff's Assistant Chief Steve Weintraub said Saturday.
Alachua County sheriff's Sgt. Keith Faulk said the body appeared to have been in the woods for at least a couple of days.
A message left Sunday with the Sheriff's Office was not immediately returned.
Meanwhile, the man whom Wilkes was to meet the day she disappeared April 22 remained jailed on an unrelated sex charge.
Duval County Judge Brent Shore set bail at $100,000 for John Mosley Jr., 39. An attorney has been appointed to represent Mosley, who authorities have questioned about the disappearance.
A court had ordered Mosley to pay child support to Wilkes for the boy, but he denied being the father.
Caged bear slashes arm of keeper at theme park
SILVER SPRINGS - A caged Kodiak bear clawed the arm of one of its keepers Saturday at Silver Springs theme park, officials said.
Jessica Metz, 25, of Ocala, was walking by the bear's cage when her right arm went inside the metal fencing area, said Steve Specht, spokesman for the theme park.
The 8-year-old bear grabbed Metz's shoulder and tore off some skin, said Heather Danehower of Marion County Fire-Rescue. But Metz's "arm and muscle tissue was intact," Danehower told the Ocala Star-Banner.
Metz was taken to Munroe Regional Medical Center, then flown to Florida Hospital in Orlando, where she was in stable condition, a hospital spokeswoman said.
Since the bear area opened in 1997, no one has been injured by a bear, Specht said. Metz has been a bear keeper for nine months.
The attraction has five Kodiaks, two South American Spectacles and four North American black bears.
