PORT ORANGE -- It was a scheme that had Port Orange officials baffled. An employee was accused of depositing utility payments from customers over an unspecified period of time into her own personal checking account, but she wrote 278 personal checks to the city for $240,539.99, and so the city recovered all of its money.
Why the money was taken in the first place and returned has been a mystery.
NEW SMYRNA BEACH -- A 24-year-old man was arrested this afternoon on charges of robbing a woman at gunpoint and pistol whipping her the previous day near New Smyrna Beach.
James L. Smith Jr. faces a charge of armed robbery with a weapon for the daylight confrontation. The 33-year-old victim was treated at Bert Fish Medical Center in New Smyrna Beach for her facial injuries and released the same day.
OAK HILL -- A midday crash at the intersection of U.S. 1 and Halifax Avenue turned deadly when a Dodge Caravan crashed into a Ford Taurus resulting in two deaths, police said.
For unknown reasons, the Dodge van stopped at the stop sign while heading west on Halifax , but then T-boned the Taurus, which was southbound on U.S. 1 passing whle passing under the yellow blinking light. Stop signs are posted on Halifax on both sides of US. 1. A vehicle the van also got caught up in the accident.
DELAND -- Four days after the Nov. 4 general elections, Josh Wagner was declared the winner of the County Council District 2 seat when opponent Nancy Epps conceded defeat during the recount process
.
Even though 6,100 votes were still to be manually recounted, Epps, who was behind by 88 votes in a machine recount, threw in the towel.
DELTONA -- Raul Colon ended up in jail after finding a naked boy in his 15-year-old daughter's bedroom and striking him with a metal pipe on Sept. 11.
The 46-year-old father wasn't aware his daughter even had a boyfriend, but became suspicious when he heard noises coming from her bedroom about 4 a.m. when he went to take his dog out.
He retrieved a metal pipe from the garage, then opened the bedroom door and found the naked 15-year-old boy standing over his daughter's bed, the Volusia County Sheriff's Office reported.
DAYTONA BEACH -- It was a new year, but life just wasn't the same for 92-year-old Floyd Snyder who leaped to his death Jan. 2, from his 9th-floor condominium balcony, police reported.
Friends and relatives told police Snyder was despondent because his wife, Leonia, who was in failing health, did not recognize him when he went to see her at a nursing home. According to a police report, he called the front desk at the Towers Condominium just before 8 a.m. and said he was going to jump.
NEW SMYRNA BEACH -- An 84-year-old woman was found Thanksgiving Day living in deplorable conditions in a home near New Smyrna Beach along with about 50 cats, 15 turkeys, 20 ducks and a dog, Volusia Sheriff's spokesman Brandon Haught said, adding deputies learned she had apparently been living in the home against her will, having been set up there by her daughter.
OSTEEN -- A 24-year-old Osteen man was pumping gas Dec. 5 at the Sunoco on State Road 415, when he was shot to death by a man who pulled into the station in a pick-up truck.
Christopher Joseph Mclellan suffered multiple gunshot wounds to the chest in the 7 p.m. incident and was transported by EVAC ambulance to Florida Hospital Fish Memorial in Orange City, where he was pronounced dead shortly after arrival.
NEW SMYRNA BEACH -- For the third time in two days on Sept. 10, Florida satellite offices of Congressman Tom Feeney have been targeted by mailings containing flour that staffers feared might have been the deadly anthrax -- the first to his Port Orange office and two others at his offices in Orlando and Titusville.
"Obviously, it was sent to his office(s) to be disruptive," said Ed Moffitt, a spokesman for the U.S. Postal Inspection Service in Orlando. "The individual may have a contrary point with whatever the representative's office is doing."
DAYTONA BEACH -- A father and son were arrested April 17, on multiple drug charges after narcotics agents seized 7 pounds of marijuana and about 102 grams of cocaine from a Daytona Beach home where the father lives.
The East Volusia Narcotics Task Force also seized a firearm, cash, 18 Ecstasy pills and a digital scale during a search of 160 Gala Circle. The contraband was found inside a house where 57-year-old Dennis Kennedy lives. He was the only one home when drug agents arrived with a search warrant, the Sheriff's Office reported.
