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By Times Staff
Published May 17, 2006

Hitch in plea deal in charter school case

NEW PORT RICHEY - There's a snag in the plea deal between prosecutors and Jeffrey Ryan Alcantara, the man accused of bilking the defunct Deerwood Academy charter school of $80,000: Neither side agrees on what it agreed to back in July.

That's when Alcantara avoided 30 years in prison by accepting a 22-month sentence on a racketeering charge, 30 months if he doesn't pay back the money.

Alcantara hasn't paid any restitution and showed up at his sentencing hearing Tuesday morning with his medication in a plastic bag, ready to go to jail.

But the state balked when defense attorney Mark Thellman asked Circuit Judge Stanley Mills to have Alcantara's state sentence run concurrently with a pending 22-month federal sentence for violating federal probation. Thellman said the state agreed to it, but Assistant State Attorney Bob Lewis said prosecutors didn't.

The judge told both sides to come back July 14 and fight it out with court transcripts and case law.

Homicide charges added in DUI crash

TAMPA - Kenneth Delmar Stewart ran a red light just before crashing into a Mercedes-Benz last month, killing a Brandon woman on the eve of her daughter's wedding, prosecutors said Tuesday.

Reconstruction of the crash indicates that Stewart was at fault, Assistant State Attorney Pam Bondi said.

Stewart, 35, already faces multiple counts of driving under the influence manslaughter and other charges related to the crash. The new information prompted the Hillsborough State Attorney's Office to add four new counts of vehicular homicide Tuesday.

On April 21, Stewart was driving a Dodge Durango that collided with Emily Manzano's Mercedes about 3 a.m. at Lumsden Road and Parsons Avenue in Brandon.

Manzano, 62, had spent the evening shuttling relatives from local airports for daughter Cathy's wedding.

Three other family members also died. Stewart of Lakeland was hospitalized briefly.

Skycrest neighborhood traffic plan revised

CLEARWATER - A plan to slow traffic passing though a central Clearwater neighborhood could be scaled back because, well, traffic might move too slowly.

City engineers fear that a traffic calming plan now in place for a section of Cleveland Street might divert cars elsewhere, further clogging main east-west roads such as Drew Street and Gulf-to-Bay Boulevard.

So instead of six traffic circles, or roundabouts, proposed for the small stretch of road in the Skycrest neighborhood, city engineers want to build two.

The revised plan, which is being debated by the City Council this week, has drawn the ire of the neighborhood's residents. They said the last-minute change could derail the entire traffic calming plan.

The point after all, they reminded the city, was to slow down cars. The City Council is expected to decide the issue at a meeting Thursday.

[Last modified May 17, 2006, 06:50:40]