Crime Scene

PBSO: Stripper, friend behind club shooting

Who hasn't been here before?

Man goes on business trip to a tropical destination.

Man goes to a strip club appropriately named "Sugar Daddy's."

Man walks out with a stripper, only to get shot seven times during a robbery attempt -- which the stripper herself helped set up, according to authorities.

OK, that's never happened to me, but it did happened to Carlos Franco, 41, of Texas, who was shot while visiting West Palm Beach last month.

Franco is now clinging to life in a Palm Beach County hospital.

The Palm Beach Post has the story.

A mug only a mother could love (UPDATED)

One of our favorite Monday time-passers here at Crime Scene is scrolling through the freshly posted mugshots The Smoking Gun compiles from all over the country.

This week's collection includes the requisite pretty girls, funny T-shirts and bad haircuts. And my personal favorite, the woman at the left who's flipping the bird.

The mugshots must be a popular feature, or else I'm guessing TSG wouldn't post them every week.

The Palm Beach Post now links the latest county jail mugshots prominently on its homepage. That recently got New Times blogger Bob Norman questioning whether this application of public records is "appropriate for a serious newspaper." 

An interesting debate. What do you think? Would you like to see the Herald post mugshots of every person who comes through the Miami-Dade and Broward jails?

**UPDATE: We do have a gallery of celebrity mugshots. Click here to see what everyone from muzak impresario Yanni to rock legend Jim Morrison to state Sen. Mandy Dawson looked like after their South Florida busts. 

From the WTF? Department

A Palm Beach County teenager had anal sex with his mom's male German shepherd and videotaped the act. On Thursday, a judge said the 18-year-old and his mother must surrender their pets to the county.

The mother objected, saying she didn't do anything wrong and was "mortified" to learn of her honor-student son's sick fetish. But the judge took the pets away and ordered $1,800 in court costs.

Here's the thing: Shocking as bestiality is, it's not illegal in Florida. The most prosecutors can hope for is a cruelty-to-animals conviction, but the penalties for that aren't too stiff.

State Sen. Nan Rich from Sunrise tried unsuccessfully this year to pass a law making bestiality illegal. Rich, an child's rights advocate who says animal abusers and child abusers are often one in the same, vowed to refile her bill next year.

Until she does, here's hoping no dog has to endure what the poor shepherd in PBC did. 

Rats, roaches invade Lake Worth home

This is nas-ty.

A Lake Worth home has become overrun by roaches and rats, prompting the city to hire an exterminator and causing neighbors to set bug traps to preempt the critters from invading their homes.

Crime Scene friend Rochelle E.B. Gilken at the Palm Beach Post paints the scene (actual photo, left) with her lede: "Rats were hanging out of the windows of a home on South E Street this morning watching health department officials and the mayor survey the infestation."

Unclear if the owner -- who has been cited previously for the code violations -- will have to repay for extermination costs.

Someone Thomas Crowned those Picassos

Two pieces of Pablo Picasso artwork valued at $450,000 were stolen from a Palm Beach gallery Thursday morning.

Now, I only dabble in Picasso, but I believe one of the etchings, Le Repas Frugal (1904), is from the artist's Blue Period. The other, Jacqueline Lisant (1964), is a much later work.

The hunt is on to find the perp or perps who lifted the artwork in a manner that was much less smooth than what Thomas Crown woulda done: They scaled a six-foot wall and broke a glass window to get into the gallery.

Granny: Thug video is fine with me

The grandmother of an 18-year-old Lake Worth man told investigators she consented to him filming her while holding a weapon, cursing and saying things like, "This is for all the pigs."

We wrote about Michael Alfinez when he was arrested last month after police discovered the footage in his car during a traffic stop. They charged him with elderly abuse and weapons charges. Apparently, he planned to submit the granny footage to a video series called Gangstas & Thugs.

Now, in a court affidavit, Alfinez's grandma, Marie Huertas, says she wasn't being abused and she wants prosecutors to drop the charges.

"I miss him and love him very much," she said to investigators, according to The Palm Beach Post, which also has a video on its site.

Sex-drenched school scandal (UPDATE)

Palm Beach County's school district has quite a scandal to contend with after two principals admitted to having sex with a secretary on school grounds.

And by "on school grounds," they mean, "in the principal's office, in the infirmary and in the bathroom." Wowzer.

The whole affair (all three were married) was discovered when the secretary's husband found a videotape of his wife having hotel-room sex with West Tech Academy Principal Steven Jackson. The husband gave the tape to school police to investigate.

The secretary, Pahokee Middle/High employee Kelli Burroughs, also acknowledged sleeping with Leroy Foster, an assistant principal at Turning Points Academy. Burroughs and Foster had sex in his office, in the school's medical clinic and in a restroom.

And - AND - Burroughs told police she and Foster had a sexual encounter with a male substitute teacher who has since left the district.

The district's superintendent told the school board to fire Burroughs, Jackson and Foster. Among the grounds for firing: Using school time for personal business. I'd say.

Read the details from The Palm Beach Post.

UPDATE (May 7) - The Post reports that all three resigned on Tuesday rather than face termination.

Mall shootings on the rise?

People used to view malls as safe places -- large public venues protected from the dangers of street crime.

I wonder if South Florida's recent mall shootings will make people reconsider that notion.

Today's Herald includes stories about an attempted murder-suicide at the Aventura Mall that left the shooter dead and a woman badly injured, and about a still-unsolved double murder at the Boca Raton Town Center.

The facts of the Aventura and Boca Raton cases seem different -- police believe the Aventura shooter knew his victim, but the Boca shootings appear to be more random -- but the terror of mall violence is present in both, just as it was at a recent Omaha mall shooting that left nine people dead.

After the Omaha shooting in December, CNN ran a piece about how violence crimes in malls are disrupting retail sales.

But what do shoppers think? Can we make malls safer? Should we? Weigh in with your comments.

7-year-old steals car, hits everything in its path

Many 7-year-olds can't reach the pedals.

That wasn't a problem for a Palm Beach Gardens boy, who stole his grandmother's SUV last week.

His driving skills, on the other hand, need some work.

The boy plowed into mailboxes, hit parked cars and signposts - all in about eight minutes.

He kept going until a sign took off the right front wheel.

The boy, who was not hurt, faces grand theft auto charges, but police said it's unlikely he'll be prosecuted.

Man makes grandma play thug

Obviously, Michael Alfinez (left) wasn't paying attention when Bird Road Rudy got busted for posting an Internet video of himself taunting cops.

Police say Alfinez, 18, of Lake Worth, made his 85-year-old grandmother hold a semiautomatic pistol and spew profanities while he filmed her. He wanted to market the clip for a video series called Gangstas & Thugs.

But when deputies recently pulled over Alfinez on a traffic stop, they found the footage in his car and watched it. The tape also included scenes of Alfinez and his buddies shooting a .22 caliber pistol in neighborhoods around Palm Beach County.

He's being charged with elderly abuse and discharging a gun in public. His family says grandma still loves him (video link also here).

Drug deal gone wrong

A Boca teen apparently thought he'd make a quick buck selling pot.

Instead Scott Leshner got robbed -- and then arrested.

Leshner called police to tell them three gun-toting men had ordered him and his friends to the ground, forced them to take off their pants and pistol whipped his friends.

The robbers stole $2,000, a laptop and marijuana.

Then Leshner called police and gave them permission to search his apartment.

That's when police found a stash of marijuana and psychedelic mushrooms and arrested Leshner for drug possession.

The Palm Beach Post has the story.

How dumb can you be?

There's dumb, and then there's brazen. These kids have a little from Column A, a little from Column B.

A 12-year-old and a 14-year-old tried to rob a police station in Port St. Lucie on Wednesday. A police station.

They walked up to the infomation booth, one pretended he had a gun in his jacket pocket, and they demanded money.

A police aide ran for backup, and within seconds half a dozen officers flooded the lobby and arrested the boys. The kids -- one of whom was already on probation -- laughed as the cops hauled them away in cuffs, according to the Palm Beach Post.

Don't Tase me, son

Ah, that joke never gets old.

But this does: A drunken party host who uses a Taser to shock his guests.

It was mostly fun and games until Kenny Chumsky (photo here) turned the stun gun on his mom Thursday, police say. The shock hit her in the leg, causing her to fall and hit her head on the garage floor.

The Port St. Lucie man was charged with aggravated domestic battery. His mom pressed charges because she was "tired of being abused," according to a police report cited at TCPalm.com.