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Around the state

Father going to prison for killing son's tormentor

By wire services
Published July 28, 2005

ORLANDO - An Apopka father was sentenced to 20 years in prison Tuesday for killing a high school student he felt was bullying his son.

Clyde Blount, 42, was charged with second-degree murder in the shooting of 16-year-old Lonnie Hillery on Feb. 17, 2004, but an Orange County jury found him guilty of manslaughter.

Blount and others said Hillery had been picking on Blount's 16-year-old son, C.J. Investigators said the elder Blount, armed with a gun, and his son went looking for the other boy after the teens got into a fistfight. When they found him, the father fired several shots, hitting Hillery, an Apopka High School student, in the back.

ST. AUGUSTINE - A man disappeared in the St. Augustine Inlet after helping his floundering 9-year-old daughter back to shore, the St. Johns County Sheriff's Office said.

Family members said Maury Tobler, 41, of St. Augustine, couldn't swim.

Tobler's daughter was playing in the surf while he fished Tuesday afternoon at Vilano Beach. She was knocked down by a wave and began drifting into the current, Sgt. Chuck Mulligan said.

Tobler helped his daughter back to the beach but lost his footing and was swept by the current into the inlet, Mulligan said. Witnesses saw him struggling before vanishing below the surface.

Divers failed to locate Tobler in the 30-foot-deep waters Tuesday and were continuing the search Wednesday.

WASHINGTON - President Bush has nominated Southwest Florida developer Al Hoffman Jr. to be ambassador to Portugal.

Hoffman, 71, is a prominent Republican fundraiser who was finance chairman for the Republican National Committee, the leader of Bush's fundraising effort in 2000 and Gov. Jeb Bush's in 2002.

He founded and is chairman of WCI Communities Inc., a home-building firm near Fort Myers.

FORT MYERS - A millionaire retiree faces a minimum of 25 years in prison after he was convicted of second-degree murder Tuesday for shooting his wife, whose body was tied to concrete blocks and dumped in the bay behind the couple's home.

Prosecutors said Donald Moringiello, 65, of Fort Myers Beach, shot Hattie "Fern" Bergeler-Moringiello, 57, four times in July 2002 and dumped her body in Estero Bay. The body later surfaced seven houses away from the couple's home. Authorities spent weeks trying to identify the victim.

Moringiello's first trial last summer ended in a mistrial when jurors couldn't agree on a verdict.

Moringiello, a retired aeronautical engineer, claimed his wife walked out after an argument.

SARASOTA - An 18-year-old man was arrested for allegedly raping three boys in his neighborhood, the Sarasota County Sheriff's Office said Wednesday.

James T. Miller was jailed on three counts of sexual battery.

According to the Sheriff's Office, the father of one victim reported that his daughter told him that in 2002 his son and another boy, both 9, were raped by Miller while sleeping out in a tent in his back yard. The daughter said Miller, then 15, said he would kill her if she told anyone. The son confirmed the account.

Miller admitted to the assaults, the Sheriff's Office said, and also said he assaulted another neighbor boy, age 13, in May or June.

[Last modified July 28, 2005, 01:09:17]