Published January 29, 2010, in The St. Augustine Record
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Looking pale and worn down 19 months after his arrest, Thomas G. Manuel walked out of the federal courthouse here Thursday anything but a free man.
At some point after April 1, Manuel, 64, will have to report to a federal prison to serve a 21-month term imposed after he pleaded guilty to accepting bribes from a developer, who was working undercover for the FBI.
The term would have been longer had he not already been living on borrowed time.
Published August 28, 2009, in The Florida Times-Union and The St. Augustine Record
Shortly after the jury gave its verdict in the case of William Telano Evans on Thursday afternoon, it was clear something was wrong.
In the courthouse hallway, Evans’ wife, Peggy, used her cell phone to call her husband, who hadn’t returned to court after lunch to hear the verdict.
“They found you not guilty,” she said. “Please, please don’t do anything.”
He never got the message.
Published July 5, 2009, in The St. Augustine Record
To believe Omar Long’s story is to admit it could happen at all.
A father wasn’t aware that his 23-month-old daughter was in the back seat of his car when he got home from dropping off his girlfriend, the girl’s mother, at work? It didn’t dawn on him to check her crib? He could doze off without knowing where his baby was?
While investigators are still scrutinizing the facts in Long’s case, his story at face value is a tough sell to anyone who hasn’t been in his spot.
But the unfathomable act — accident or not — of leaving a child in a car to suffer a sweltering death happens more these days than most would care to believe. Still, prosecutors and cops, and at times judges and juries, are left to answer a simple question: Mustn’t someone pay?
Published March 11, 2009, in The St. Augustine Record
For a homeless man who was found dead in the woods in June, there is no grave.
His remains are in a box placed in the Medical Examiner’s Office.
There have been no grieving family members, no flowers, no wakes. Nothing.
Published February 22, 2009, in The St. Augustine Record
Benjamin Colenn Lightsey dragged his wife, Melissa, out of the back seat of his truck on Nov. 8 and put her down on the pavement of their driveway.
He punched her in the face two or three times, knocking her out, then choked her until he heard a “pop” in her throat. Then he let go.
“I had no control and when I was — when I was swinging, it was not me, it was — it’s not the Ben I’ve ever known, it was not me,” he said, according to the 121-page transcript of Lightsey’s confession that was released Friday. “It’s not the Ben that my wife knew, it’s not the Ben anybody in this world knows, because I’ve never seen him before.”
He checked her pulse and found nothing. He stood, looked around and made sure no one had seen what he had done.
Published February 13, 2009, in The St. Augustine Record
SATSUMA, Fla. — Crystal Sheffield stood up from her chair after an interview in front of a Fox News camera.
A producer removed the earpiece from Sheffield’s ear, and then she broke down into her sister’s arms.
She seemed to say the words, “Where is she?” If she didn’t say them, they were undoubtedly on her mind.
Published January 21, 2009, in The St. Augustine Record
A few dozen yards west of a market where, more than a century ago, slaves were sold at auction and a few dozen yards north of where, in the 1960s, black men and black women could not sit and eat at the Woolworth’s pharmacy, several hundred people gathered Tuesday to watch on television as Barack Obama was sworn in as president.
At noon a TV commentator chimed in over the sound of a cello and said of Obama: “He is now the president of the United States.” Obama had not yet taken the oath of office, but President George W. Bush’s term had ended, as per the 20th Amendment to the Constitution.
On the Plaza de la Constitucion the crowd erupted at the news.
Published December 27, 2008, in The St. Augustine Record
Before the man who confessed to killing her mother was sentenced two weeks ago, Sandra Jordan said she would throw a party if the judge sent him back to Mississippi, where he had already been serving a 150-year sentence for rape, robbery and burglary.
On Friday, she started planning. The news that Mark Dean Aldridge had been sent back had been a long time coming for Jordan.
“We can finally say now that we have a little bit of closure,” she said. “As much as we could get.”
Published December 21, 2008, in The St. Augustine Record
Andrew Stanton should be dead.
His young life, mired in the St. Augustine drug scene and marred by drug addictions, should have ended on Oct. 3 at the Lil’ Champ gas station just south of the airport, when a U.S. marshal fired three rounds from his Glock 22 at him, hitting Stanton right below his right eye.
And Stanton would be dead had it not been for a freak coincidence from three years earlier, when he was jumped in Lincolnville, a few blocks from his home.
Published November 28, 2008, in The St. Augustine Record
With her husband watching football, Robyn Gioia stood in the kitchen of her Jacksonville home on Thursday afternoon.
A pumpkin pie cooled near the oven and a turkey had been readied to go in next.
It was the prototypical Thanksgiving Day household, save for the fact that, for Gioia anyway, it wasn’t really Thanksgiving.
