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Briefs

Jury convicts driver of vehicular homicide

By wire services
Published September 28, 2005

TAMPA - A jury found a Tampa man guilty of vehicular homicide Tuesday, months after he led police on a high-speed chase across the city that left one dead and two injured.

Dwayne D. Brown faces up to 60 years in prison for his role in a fatal crash on Jan. 5. The jury deliberated for nearly four hours before deciding Brown, 28, was driving recklessly when he plowed into a Tampa family near Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Armenia Avenue.

The impact killed driver George Galindo, 50, and injured his brother, Jesus Santos Galindo, and sister-in-law, Odalis Galindo, 45.

Shooting nets ex-officer five years of probation

LARGO - A former St. Petersburg police officer with a troubled past was sentenced to five years of probation Tuesday for his role in a domestic shooting last year.

Antonio Garner, 37, resigned from the St. Petersburg Police Department in June 2001 after working there for almost seven years. He left as supervisors announced that he had violated 14 department policies.

Later that year, a jury found Garner not guilty of the attempted robbery of a St. Petersburg man. About the same time, he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of making a false police report.

In June 2004, Garner was arrested on charges he fired a gun three times during a dispute with his girlfriend at his St. Petersburg home. Tuesday, Garner pleaded guilty to charges of shooting into a dwelling, improper exhibition of a firearm and misdemeanor assault. Pinellas-Pasco Judge Richard Luce sentenced Garner to serve five years of probation.

Terri Schiavo's family, husband writing books

TAMPA - Terri Schiavo's parents and siblings are writing a book about their struggle in the end-of-life case that divided the country and captured the attention of everyone from Pope John Paul II to President Bush, a publisher said Tuesday.

The yet-untitled memoir by parents Bob and Mary Schindler, brother Bobby Schindler and sister Suzanne Vitadamo will be published by Warner Books in March to coincide with the first anniversary of the death of the brain-damaged woman, whose feeding tube was removed after her husband won a court order to do so.

Also planned for release in March is a 280-page memoir by Schiavo's husband, Michael, who fought his in-laws in court for eight years to end her life, arguing she would not have wanted to be kept alive in what doctors called a persistent vegetative state. Michael Schiavo said he is collaborating with author Michael Hirsh on Terri: the Truth .

The Schindlers will donate profits from their book to a foundation dedicated to protecting severely disabled people that they established during the battle over Terri Schiavo's life, Warner Books said.

LARGO - A Largo man has been sentenced to more than two years in prison for beating an opossum to death and stringing it from a power pole with a suicide note.

Christopher Lownsbury, 22, pleaded no contest Tuesday to an animal cruelty charge. He also admitted to violating his probation on previous burglary charges.

Lownsbury will receive more than a year off his sentence for the time he has served since his September 2004 arrest.

A resident of Lakeview Mobile Home Park in Seminole found the opossum on Sept. 9, 2004. It had been beaten to death and strung to a power pole with twine. It had a broken jaw and leg and dislocated eye. Earphones were fitted over its head and a note attached to its body that read: "I'm suicidal so I hung myself b----."

[Last modified September 28, 2005, 02:30:38]