SENTENCING SET FOR CHEMIST IN BASEBALL STEROIDS CASE
Sentencing is set in South Florida for a black market chemist who supplied banned performance-enhancing substances to a clinic whose customers included professional baseball players and other athletes. Paulo Berejuk, who worked out of his suburban garage, faces up to three years in prison at a hearing Wednesday in Miami federal court. Berejuk pleaded guilty in December to conspiracy to distribute testosterone. Investigators said Berejuk was the key drug source for Anthony Bosch, who ran the now-closed Biogenesis of America clinic that provided steroids to baseball players and other athletes.
NORTH FLORIDA COUNTY SEEKS BIGGER STRETCHERS FOR OBESE PATIENTS
A growing obese population in Florida has health officials in one northern county seeking new stretchers with hydraulic lifts. Alachua County emergency officials want an $11,500 grant to help buy two new stretchers that can move patients who are too big to be safely transported on current equipment. County rescuers say they get more than 75 patients a year who weigh more than 400 pounds. The problem has increased as the state’s obesity rate ballooned from 11 percent in 1990 to 26 percent in 2013.
NEWBORN SMOTHERED BY SLEEPING MOTHER
Detectives say a one-month old baby was accidentally smothered by her mother at their home near St. Petersburg. The Tampa Bay Times reports 35-year-old Nafisa Doctor Gibbons told authorities she fell asleep early Thursday after bringing her crying daughter Chloe to bed with her. But when she woke up some two hours later, the child was unresponsive. The infant died Sunday at All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg after being taken off life support.
ITALIAN TOURIST FILMED UNDER WOMAN’S SKIRT
An Italian tourist is accused of using his iPhone to video under the skirt of a woman who was shopping in Miami Beach. Police say 28-year-old Filippo Fiorentini put his phone in a basket at Whole Foods on South Beach and placed it under the woman in front of him at the checkout line. The woman noticed and told an off-duty police officer at the store. Police found the video on the phone and arrested Fiorentini on a charge of video voyeurism. He bonded out of jail.
WITHOUT HATE CRIME, US LIMITED IN PROSECUTING ZIMMERMAN
The Justice Department’s decision to not prosecute civilian neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman for a hate crime in the shooting death of an unarmed black teenager is not necessarily a harbinger of how it will rule in two other high-profile deaths of unarmed black men at the hands of police officers, legal experts say. That is because the standards used to gauge the existence of a hate crime committed by civilians are different from those used to measure the behavior of police officers, who can be charged with depriving someone of their civil rights by using excessive force in the course of duty.
