Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies

Girl found dead in motel; mother to face charges

CHARLOTTE HARBOR - The mother of a 7-year-old girl found dead in a motel room will be arrested on a murder charge, Charlotte County sheriff's detectives said Thursday.

A warrant was issued for Ruth Ann Burns, 28, in the death of her daughter, Hannah, whose body was found Wednesday afternoon. Detectives declined Thursday to release most details of the crime.

Burns was being treated at Lee Memorial Hospital for self-inflicted injuries, the Sheriff's Office said. Detectives combed the room at the Triangle Motel, south of Punta Gorda, for evidence Thursday.

An autopsy was performed, but investigators declined to reveal the cause of Hannah's death.

Burns and her daughter were from the Port Charlotte area. The Sheriff's Office was called to the motel Wednesday by friends of the mother, who went there to check on the two and were denied entrance by Burns. They found the girl dead and think she had been dead at least a day.

Burns fled the motel and deputies had to track her down in a nearby woods using a bloodhound.

HAMPTON - For the second straight day, rain on Thursday helped firefighters trying to control a blaze in a North Florida swamp.

Rain began falling about 1 p.m. and firefighters stopped building fire lines around the massive Santa Fe swamp because of lightning, said Annaleasa Winter, a wildlife mitigation specialist for the Florida Division of Forestry.

About a half-inch of rain Wednesday helped knock down the fast-growing wildfire and allowed some 500 evacuated residents near the Alachua-Bradford County line to return home.

Winter said a tour of the swamp Thursday showed little fire or smoke. "It is looking really good," Winter said.

The blaze started Tuesday and quickly raced through 4,050 acres of mostly inaccessible swampland.

Rain has also helped firefighters gain the upper hand on a blaze in the John Bethea State Forest.

JACKSONVILLE - A former Jacksonville police officer who strangled a businessman in his patrol car while committing a robbery and the officer's police accomplice have been ordered to pay the victim's family $9.8-million.

An attorney representing Sami Safar's family, Jeffrey Morris, said he realizes the amount may never be paid, but said, "it's a recognition by the court of the tremendous loss to the Safar family."

Senior U.S. District Judge John Moore II on Tuesday ordered the convicted officers, Karl Waldon and Aric Sinclair, to pay the amount, based on economic damage calculations by an economist.

Waldon robbed and strangled Safar in his squad car on July 3, 1998, after the convenience store owner withdrew $51,000 from a SouthTrust Bank branch. Sinclair, working off-duty security at the bank, gave Waldon information about Safar's habits and car.

Waldon is serving four life sentences. Sinclair is serving 17 years and seven months in prison after pleading guilty to conspiracy.