TAMPA -- Police agencies throughout the Tampa Bay area plan to saturate the streets and highways this weekend with officers watching for drunken drivers.

They also will be looking for seat belt violations and reckless drivers.

Until midnight on Monday, the Florida Highway Patrol will team up with police departments and sheriff's offices in Hillsborough, Pinellas, Pasco and Hernando counties.

In Hillsborough County, surveillance will be especially strong along Interstates 4, 75 and 275, and Dale Mabry Highway. In Pinellas, enforcement will be concentrated around the Howard Frankland, Bayside and Skyway bridges.

Last year during the New Year's Eve holiday, 24 people died statewide in traffic crashes. Nearly half of those crashes were alcohol-related, and 79 percent of the drivers and passengers were not wearing seat belts.

Gun thought to be used in mom's killing is found

CRYSTAL RIVER -- Mounted volunteers for the Citrus County Sheriff's Office found a gun in thick woods Friday along the suspected getaway route of a man accused of shooting his mother to death outside a convenience store two days earlier.

The volunteers also found a blue shirt about a quarter mile from the gun. The shirt matches a description of a witness in the alleged matricide Wednesday, said sheriff's spokeswoman Ronda Hemminger Evan.

Evan said the shirt and gun likely would have been discarded before a deputy saw the van driven by James Utsey, 30, of Inglis, on W Dunklin Street and attempted to pull it over.

Investigators say Utsey killed his mother, Barbara Utsey, 64, a well-known community activist, outside the Coastal food mart on State Road 488 Wednesday after chasing her car into the parking lot.

The gun was found off N Matsonford Avenue at about 3:15 p.m.

NAACP state conference president to give address

ST. PETERSBURG -- Adora Obi Nweze, president of the Florida State Conference of the NAACP, will give the keynote address at the St. Petersburg chapter's annual Emancipation Proclamation Service at 11 a.m. Monday at Mount Zion Progressive Missionary Baptist Church, 955 20th St. S, St. Petersburg. Music will be performed by the Alumni Singers. The public also is invited to meet the newly elected NAACP officers. For information, call Gwen Reese, 867-2675.

Funeral home donates services for infant

Two-month-old Brandon Malicoate will get a proper burial. Family Funeral Care of Pasco County agreed to donate services to the family of the infant who died while his mother huddled with him and his 3-year-old sister for warmth in their home north of Weeki Wachee. A memorial service is planned for noon today at the funeral home in Hudson. Officials still have not determined a cause of death but say it appears accidental.

Two from Lakeland held in kidnapping-robberies

TAMPA -- Two men from Lakeland have been jailed on charges of armed robbery and kidnapping in Hillsborough County.

Isaac Mathieu, 20, was arrested Friday in the Hernando County Jail, the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office said. Mathieu is accused of having robbed an Eckerd drug store on W Hillsborough Avenue on Aug. 25.

Armed with a handgun, the robber and a partner herded six employees into an office, tied up one employee and took a large sum of money.

Samuel Knight, 19, was arrested in Polk County on a warrant charging him with robbing a Walgreens drug store on Martin Luther King Boulevard on Dec. 26. The robber and a partner, armed with handguns, tied up six employees and forced the manager to open a register.

Investigators are looking into other, similar robberies in Tampa during the past four months.

Adult-club manager sues over firing

TAMPA -- A former manager of the 2001 Odyssey claims in a lawsuit that he was fired after allowing police to enter a private room at the adult club rather than be arrested.

Anthony Clay claims in the lawsuit filed Friday in Hillsborough Circuit Court that club owners instructed employees to lock "VIP rooms" during police raids and refuse to open them even if threatened with arrest.

Management promised a $500 bonus to those employees arrested, the suit said, a claim that a club supervisor denied Friday.

Police raided the club on N Dale Mabry Highway on Sept. 15 at 10:30 p.m. While officers arrested and handcuffed one employee for refusing to open a door, another officer told Clay to open a VIP room and Clay complied.

Three days later, according to the suit, supervisor Hal King phoned Clay at home and told him he was fired for being a "weak link."

Clay, who could not be reached Friday, claims he was wrongfully terminated. He wants his job back and back pay for time missed since his firing.

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