HOLT — A 30-year-old man has been charged with breaking into a home Saturday evening and attacking a couple with an axe handle.

Douglas Scott Martin, who lives in Milton, knocked on the door of a home on Wallman Lane shortly after 9:30 p.m., according to the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office.

Arlie Grice and his wife, Joyce, were in bed.

When Arlie got up to answer the door, Martin rushed in.

Martin had his face painted black and was wearing camouflage and a hooded sweatshirt. He was armed with an axe handle and a butcher knife.

He beat Arlie to the ground using the axe handle and stood over him demanding money, according to the Sheriff’s Office.

Arlie told investigators that he recognized Martin’s voice.

Martin took Joyce into the back bedroom and hit her with the ax handle. Then Arlie armed himself with his own axe handle and the two began to fight.

Joyce was able to escape and call law enforcement.

When deputies arrived, Martin had fled. He left behind the axe handle, a glove and a bloody shirt.

K-9 units with the Sheriff’s Office began tracking him.

He was located later, without a shirt, in the parking lot of Brown’s Grocery Store on West Highway 90.

He told investigators that the home invasion was a “prank,” the Sheriff’s Office reported.

Arlie, 52, was taken to North Okaloosa Medical Center for treatment. He suffered injuries to his head and torso and had a punctured lung.

Martin was charged with armed home invasion robbery, two counts of aggravated battery with a deadly weapon and felony violation of probation.

He was being held in the Okaloosa County Jail on Sunday with no bond set.

The Navarre Rotary club held its 2nd annual charity volleyball tournament Sunday on the beach behind Juana's Pagodas at Navarre Beach. The event is a fundraiser for the civic organization, which this year awarded four $1,000 scholarships to graduating seniors from Navarre High School.

Click here to see a slideshow of the tournament.
 

CRESTVIEW — Representatives from the city and its partners will meet Tuesday to find a way to move forward a project that would upgrade an at-capacity sewer line north of Intestate 10.

If successful, a shopping center that is part of the project could produce as many as 1,200 jobs, Mayor David Cadle said.

The city has been in negotiations for several years with developers of a residential neighborhood and an assisted living facility, and with the landowner of the planned shopping center site.

The arrangement would allow each partner to facilitate its respective developments by contributing to a sewer line upgrade that the city says it can’t afford on its own.

However, the project came to a halt in August 2012 when Beach Community Bank, which owns the 144-acre tract planned for the shopping center, said it had not received promised impact fee waivers.

“Based on the city’s representations, we contracted to sell the property to a developer who understood the fees would be waived,” Beach Community Bank president and CEO Tony Hughes stated in an email.

While the city has waived more than $1.2 million in estimated transportation impact fees for the project, Public Works director Wayne Steele said it cannot legally waive the estimated $554,730 sewer utility impact fees, which are pledged for the project’s sewer treatment plant.

“But there are some other options the city can offer,” Cadle said.

Beach Community Bank Senior Vice President Scott McCormick said the developer, Bob Peck of Watkins Retail Group, cannot move forward on the shopping center until concerns of sewer line easements and the impact fee waiver are resolved.

Any impact fee waivers the city provides will be more than made up by additional sales and property taxes the shopping center generates, McCormick said, calling the partnership “a win-win for all.”

“People around Crestview are very pro this project,” he said. “There are not a lot of shopping options to choose from.”

McCormick said he was encouraged by comments made by Cadle and city council members during a May 21 meeting, and believes the city supports the project.

“At the end of the day, in all honesty, I am very optimistic that on June 4 at the workshop, we will come to a conclusion that will make everybody happy and we’ll move forward,” he said.

“I am convinced this project will come to fruition,” Cadle said. “When it’s finished, it has the potential to bring as many as 1,200 jobs to Crestview as well as shopping opportunities our citizens want.”

WANT TO GO?

The Crestview City Council next week will discuss a proposal to upgrade an at-capacity sewage line north of Interstate 10. A public workshop is at 4 p.m. June 4 in the council chamber at City Hall.
 

Crestview News Bulletin Staff Writer Brian Hughes can be reached at 850-682-6524 or brianh@crestviewbulletin.com. Follow him on Twitter @cnbBrian.

FORT WALTON BEACH — Two years ago, Anna Marchetti arrived at Fort Walton Beach High School to pursue a dream.

The then-17-year-old spoke with her parents and together they decided the educational opportunities in her native Italy didn’t match up to her aspirations and prepared to move to the United States.

“My mom just wanted more for me,” said Marchetti, now an 18-year-old graduating senior. “She said, ‘Why stop here? Why not go somewhere you can do anything if you apply yourself?’ ”

Anna wrestled with the suggestion, as any teenager might, but ultimately decided to leave her father, who is in the Italian Air Force, behind and move to Florida with her mother, Michele Cook-Marchetti and younger sister Lilli.

 Initially, Anna thought she would go to her mother’s alma mater, Choctawhatchee High School, but the family settled in Destin and FWBHS made more sense.

From the moment she walked in the door, the lithe dancer and artist made an impression.

“You just immediately like this kid,” Principal Charlene Couvillon said. “She just has this spark about her.”

It took some time to figure out the classes she’d need to graduate, but Anna didn’t hesitate to embrace every opportunity to thrive in her new environment.

“She had to relearn everything,” Michele said, before adding, “... I didn’t expect it to be this good.

“She delivered.”

Anna passed the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test the first time she took it, scored high on an Advanced Placement history exam and excelled on the ACT.

In the early days, Anna embraced her new school and joined the track team and leadership class.

While in Italy, her studies were focused on the humanities and fine arts. Her new school’s emphasis on science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM courses, caught her off-guard.

“I came here my junior year and I was like, ‘Oh my goodness! This is completely different than I ever imagined,’ ” Anna said. “Math and science have been my two biggest stumbling blocks.

“But I did manage to get over them.”

In fact, she discovered she has a passion for economics and plans to pursue it in college on her path to becoming an environmental lawyer or getting a degree in international studies. 

Anna, who has dual-citizenship in Italy and the U.S., is fluent in five languages and does well with Spanish since it is similar to Italian.

“I have a passion for the languages; the more the merrier,” she said. “I want to know, I have this hunger for knowledge.”

In the fall, she will head to Philadelphia to pursue her bachelor’s degree at La Salle University. It was one of 10 schools she was accepted to and features smaller classes than state universities.

Even once the final semester began winding down, Anna said she kept her focus.

“I said, ‘Nope,’ to senioritis,” she said with a laugh. “I don’t know what it is — I’m immune to it.”

Couvillon predicts a bright future for Anna because of her combined determination and fierce desire to ensure her family’s sacrifice was well worth it.

“She is going to go very far,” Couvillon said. “... She’s never let her circumstances adversely affect her.”
 

Contact Daily News Staff Writer Katie Tammen at 850-315-4440 or ktammen@nwfdailynews.com. Follow her on Twitter @KatieTnwfdn.

Rainer Pycior and Marion Ferres are on a hunt to find recipes that define America.

The German couple is embarking on a nine-month adventure traveling across the United States to write an adventure cookbook on the cuisine of the nation.

“We’re here to bring the culture of the people out so that the Europeans don’t get the idea that this is a hotdog and hamburger country,” Pycior said. “A lot of people have the wrong idea about the United States and their culinary habits.”

Pycior and his wife, Ferres, arrived in the United States mid-May and have traveled to Vero Beach, Fla., Williston, N.C. and Navarre. They said their next few stops will be in Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi.

So far, they have found seafood recipes in Vero Beach, BBQ recipes in Williston and some dessert recipes from locals in Navarre.

What the pair hopes to do is get recommendations on recipes to put in their book and contacts to meet, interview and photograph on their journey.

“We’re sort of winging it,” Pycior said. “If people contact us then we’ll go to where the people are. We’re just going places.

“Anywhere that’s in a state with a county fair or where your grandma makes the best biscuit and gravy. We’re just looking for making contacts.”

CHECK IT OUT

Have a recipe? Know of a good cook? Email marion.ferres@web.de or follow the couple on Twitter @CookAcrossUSA.
 

Contact Daily News Staff Writer Angel McCurdy at 850-315-4432 or amccurdy@nwfdailynews.com. Follow her on Twitter @AngelMnwfdn.

James Harvey Tipler, convicted last month of attempting to have Assistant State Attorney Russ Edgar murdered, faces 60 years in prison when he is sentenced today by Okaloosa County Judge T. Patterson Maney.

State Attorney Bill Eddins, who assisted in the prosecution of Tipler, said he intends to seek the harshest permissible punishment.

“We feel this type of case can undermine the entire justice system, and as a result we intend to ask for the maximum sentence available,” Eddins said.

Two days after Tipler learns how long he will spend in prison for solicitation to commit first degree murder he is scheduled to go on trial for racketeering, grand theft and practicing law without a license.

Jury selection is slated to begin Wednesday in the racketeering case and Eddins said he expects the trial to last three weeks.

Eddins will serve as lead prosecutor in the trial. Edgar, along with Assistant State Attorney Jack Schlechter, will join Eddins in court.

Though Edgar was the target of Tipler’s murder plot, Eddins said he couldn’t afford to sideline the veteran prosecutor for the racketeering trial .

 “He’s not a victim in this case, he’s not a witness in this case, there’s no reason he can’t participate,” Eddins said. “He spent five years in the development of this case.”

Tipler, practiced law for several years in Okaloosa County before being disbarred in 2008. He has also been disbarred in the states of Alabama and California.

Tipler opened a local immigration business after being suspended by the Florida bar.

He was arrested in late 2008 for the first of three times on racketeering charges, the Florida Supreme Court  found he had “engaged in an ongoing pattern of egregious misconduct” that included stealing money from clients.

Following the first arrest, prosecutors say, Tipler continued cheating clients and stealing money. He was arrested in 2010 and again in 2011 on racketeering charges.

After the third arrest, Okaloosa County Judge Michael Flowers ordered Tipler’s bond revoked. It was from the Okaloosa County Jail that he worked with three other inmates in an effort to arrange for Edgar to be killed. He was convicted of the solicitation to commit murder charge May 7.

The trial could go three weeks and prove costly to the state due to the fact that more than 60 victim witnesses who do not live locally have to be brought in to testify, Eddins said.
 

Contact Daily News Staff Writer Tom McLaughlin at 850-315-4435 or tmclaughlin@nwfdailynews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TomMnwfdn.

To nominate a student for Youth Spotlight, email wvictora@nwfdailynews.com or call 315-4478.

NICEVILLE — When he was in the first grade, Charles Foy started down a road that would ultimately reward his giving and determined spirit with a stepping stone toward his future.

The Niceville High junior didn’t always want to be in the Boy Scouts of America but ultimately stayed with the organization. Now he’s not only earned the highest award in scouting but received a $25,000 college scholarship from the American Legion in a statewide contest for his efforts.

“I’ve watched him grow from an 11-year-old tadpole to what he is now,” said Guy Wills, Charles’ former scout master. “It seems like he’s always busy doing something.”

In addition to earning more merit badges than any other scout Wills has met, Charles combines scouting with his passion for his church.

He is a member of Holy Name of Jesus Catholic Church in Niceville, and it came as no surprise when he built a fence and two shelving units for it as his Eagle project.

 “I really wanted to give back for all they have done for me,” Charles said.

After about a year of preparations, Charles and a group of volunteers spent two days completing the tasks, and by the spring of 2012 Charles had the award. In spite of achieving it already, his attention remains on community service. 

 “Now that I’ve reached what I have I want to give back to the younger boys," he said.
 

Contact Daily News Staff Writer Katie Tammen at 850-315-4440 or ktammen@nwfdailynews.com. Follow her on Twitter @KatieTnwfdn.

The writer of the May 30 letter, “Immoral decision,” regarding allowing homosexual boys in the Boy Scouts, probably would describe himself as a Christian. Jesus taught love, kindness, compassion and inclusiveness — not ignorance, intolerance and cruelty.
Any rational person in the 21st century knows that homosexuality is not a choice people make. It is who they are, and they should have the same constitutional rights as all other Americans.
The Boy Scouts will be much better off without the participation of those who are willfully ignorant and uncaring. The writer of “Immoral decision” predicts that in 10 or 15 years the Boy Scouts will be completely irrelevant, but it is much more likely that the ignorant and uncaring will be irrelevant.

— ELIZABETH HALEY DaCOSTA
Destin
 

By RICK CHAPPELL

Florida has a large number of inlets that connect freshwater outflow to the ocean. These inlets play a unique and important role in the state’s economy, both in commercial shipping and fishing and in tourism related to the use of neighboring beaches together with sport fishing and sailing.
Recognizing the importance of maintaining the inlets for tourism revenue statewide, the Florida Legislature created a statute to guide the maintenance of all Florida inlets. This original law laid the foundation for the Inlet Management Plan, or IMP, that currently controls maintenance of the inlet at Destin’s East Pass. This statute was based on an attempt to identify an average drift along the shoreline (littoral drift) in order to guide the placement of sand that’s dredged from the inlet.
In the case of East Pass, the average drift originally was calculated to be east to west, which led to a requirement to place 82,000 cubic yards of sand to the west of the inlet annually when the inlet was dredged. The current IMP for East Pass was supposed to have been validated and redefined in 2005, but this has not happened.
There is a significant problem with this current outdated plan. First, the drift along the shoreline can change so that the passing of a standard amount of sand to the west does not always match the sand movement that is actually happening.
Second and most importantly, impulsive catastrophic weather events, such as hurricanes, can move massive amounts of sand in the course of only a few days. This large-scale hurricane movement of sand responds to the direction of the winds and the resulting ocean surge, which can come from any direction off the ocean, depending on where the hurricane makes landfall.
For example, Hurricane Ivan in October 2004 hit our area with winds greater than 130 mph and a surge of 8 to 12 feet. In a matter of days, the surge removed 300 feet of beach width from Destin’s beaches, leaving the Gulf of Mexico shoreline up against beachside homes and condominiums. Because of the direction of Ivan’s surge, a large amount of this sand was washed over the east jetty into East Pass. When the next dredging took place, the original IMP required that the dredged sand from the pass be placed to the west, onto Okaloosa Island, rather than back to the east side where it had come from. It took nine years to get the approval and funding to replace the beach that was destroyed in a few days by Ivan.
The large number of hurricanes that Florida experienced in 2004-08 led to a number of situations around the state where the placement of sand based on a long-term average drift, without considering hurricane effects, led to inadequate solutions for repairing the beaches around the inlets. Recognizing this, the Legislature amended the statute regulating inlet maintenance in 2008.
The amended statute includes wording that would take care of hurricane events as well; it states that sand dredged from the inlet should be placed on “adjacent eroded beaches” where it is needed to help maintain the beaches. This sand placement would be guided by continuous, scientifically based monitoring of the condition of the adjacent beaches.
The IMP for Destin’s East Pass has not been revised to incorporate this important change in the Florida statute.
The state Department of Environmental Protection created a technical advisory committee of professional coastal engineers to recommend an update of the East Pass IMP. That draft update has been completed and is now compatible with the new state statute.
The new plan can, for the first time, give the flexibility to dredge East Pass and use the sand where it is needed to maintain the adjacent eroded beaches, be they east or west, in response to catastrophic hurricanes like Opal and Ivan, as well as in response to changes in the long-term average drift of the sand. This would be a dramatic improvement, making the new IMP responsive to the needs of the entire East Pass inlet community.
The updating of this plan is long overdue and incredibly important! With another hurricane season having begun, it is urgent to have this new Inlet Management Plan in place. The new plan has been approved by the Destin City Council, and the entire East Pass community should strongly support its timely approval and implementation by the Department of Environmental Protection.

--

Dr. Rick Chappell writes: “I am a resident of Destin living in Destin Pointe, an area which has been hit hard by hurricanes over the past nine years. … I am a research professor of physics at Vanderbilt University and have been working actively within our community to help bring about a solution which will allow the continuous effective maintenance of our inlet.”
 

By LOUIS SVEHLA

During the spring break season, Walton County encounters a large influx of visitors to local public and private beaches. As part of that influx, our beaches become inundated with trash and waste left by a number of visitors. In regard to your newspaper’s May 30 editorial (“A cleaner beach, but no sunshine”), we would like to clarify the process and procedures that were and remain in place.
During the mentioned dates, a call was placed to a county commissioner in regard to the amount of trash on the beach in the Whale’s Tail area. The commissioner forwarded the information to the county’s Administration Department, as procedure dictates.
It was at that time that the sitting county administrator began looking into the situation.
During this time, members of the Tourist Development Council’s Beach Maintenance Division visited the beaches to observe beach conditions and what level of trash existed in the area. It was observed that not only was there an abundance of trash on the public beach in front of the Whale’s Tail, but that the trash had also spread into an area of private beach and that items were very close to entering the Gulf of Mexico.
It was the finding of the division’s manager that the beach was in such bad shape that it constituted a public health and safety issue and a solution needed to be found.
Following that finding, the administrator conferred with the county attorney to work to find a solution to the issue plaguing the beach and the beach visitors. A decision was made by the county administrator, under the advisement of the county attorney, that the beach had become a health and safety issue for the beachgoers and that action needed to be taken.
It was at this time that the county administrator advised the TDC director to execute her spending authority to hire a third party to assist in beach cleanup in order to protect the public and eliminate the health and safety concern.
Currently, per the Walton County Policies and Procedures Manual, Section PP-002, the county administrator, the assistant county administrator and the TDC director have the ability to authorize any spending up to $25,000 without board approval as long as it does not cause a budget overage.
The TDC director at that time enacted her spending authority and hired a third-party contractor to assist in the beach cleanup process, which in this case came to a total of $11,500.
Because of the current policy in place, there were no sunshine violations in regard to the hiring of the contractor to assist in this process, as the TDC director has the authority to authorize this level of spending.
While there may be discussion on other items in regard to this approval to hire a third party to assist with the cleanup, the Administration Department will always err on the side of caution in regard to the health and safety of our citizens and visitors.

--

Louis Svehla is the public information manager for the Walton Board of County Commissioners.
 

A federal appeals court mainly muddied the issue last week when it ruled that Gov. Rick Scott’s state employee drug-testing program wasn’t exactly unconstitutional — as a lower court had decided — but it wasn’t exactly permissible, either.
Despite the foggy reasoning, two things were clear from Wednesday’s ruling:
-- The 11th Circuit Court wouldn’t go along with Gov. Scott’s plan to order random drug testing for all employees and applicants in executive branch agencies. According to The Associated Press, that would be about three-quarters of all state employees.
-- This argument will continue to unspool for months.
The court objected to across-the-board urine tests for state workers, including workers who aren’t even suspected of using drugs, because such tests would constitute an unreasonable search. But it also objected to a federal judge’s earlier ruling that the entire program was unconstitutional. The court pointed out that testing employees in “certain safety-sensitive categories,” such as police officers and train conductors, would be OK.
No surprise there. We’ve noted the exception for safety-sensitive jobs in previous editorials.
What was surprising was the court’s willingness to let the Scott administration decide who gets tested and who doesn’t.
The governor’s lawyers have argued that workers in safety-sensitive jobs could include folks who climb ladders and stack boxes. In other words, just about anybody.
The court scoffed. “We reject the idea,” it said, “that a stack of heavy boxes or a wet floor falls within the same ballpark of risk as the operation of a 10,000-ton freight train or the danger posed by a person carrying a firearm.”
The next step is Gov. Scott’s. He promised to “go forward in arguing this case in both the appellate and trial courts.”
Meanwhile, we haven’t seen any reports of drugged-up state employees causing mayhem. So come on. Exactly what problem is the governor trying to solve here?
 

Crews will be paving Lewis Turner Boulevard from Roberts Road to the State Road 85 intersection until June 6.

Lane closures will be in effect from 8 p.m. to 5 a.m., according to a press release from the Florida Department of Transportation.

Construction activities are weather dependent and may be delayed or re-scheduled in the event of inclement weather.
Motorists, pedestrian and bicyclists are reminded to travel with care through the work zone and to watch for construction equipment and workers entering and exiting the roadway.

For more Florida Department of Transportation District Three information follow us on twitter @myfdot_nwfl.

PONCE DE LEON — A 20-year-old man is in critical condition following a crash Friday morning, according to the Florida Highway Patrol press release.

Marcus Wayne Doolittle was driving southbound on County Road 282 around 6:38 a.m. traveling onto the east grass shoulder and back onto the road, the release said.

Doolittle overcorrected his 2000 Ford Ranger, causing the vehicle to go into the western grass shoulder where the vehicle then struck a tree. The wreck caused $7,000 in damages to his vehicle.

The Ponce de Leon man was taken to an area hospital.

No charges will be filed.

SANTA ROSA BEACH -- A 15-year-old Freeport boy was taken to Bay Medical Center in serious condition Sunday afternoon after being hit by a car, according to a Florida Highway Patrol media release.

Dalton McGriff was riding his skateboard on the north side of County Road 30A when he entered a marked crosswalk about 2:30 p.m., according to the release. He entered in the direct path of a 1999 Toyota Solara driven by 56-year-old John Allen of Santa Rosa Beach.

Allen was not injured. McGriff was flown by medical helicopter to the hospital in Bay County.

The accident remains under investigation.

PENSACOLA — Investigators were awaiting a medical examiner's report before releasing details about a missing 2-year-old found dead on the floorboard of a car in Pensacola, authorities said Monday.

Hezekiah Brooks was reported missing around 2:30 on Sunday afternoon near his home. He was found in the car that evening.

Sena Maddison, spokeswoman for the Escambia County Sheriff's Office, said an investigation into Brooks' death was ongoing. Maddison said her department was not yet releasing details about why the child was in the car, who owned the car, who found the child, how long he had been inside or whether there could be any charges in the child's death.

The department issued only a brief news release stating that the child had been found and thanking searchers for their efforts to find the boy.

The Klass Kids Foundation, the Escambia County Search and Rescue and the U.S. Coast Guard participated in the search.

The medical examiner's report will determine how the child died. It was not immediately known when the would be completed.

According to the sheriff's office news release, first responders and emergency medical technicians attempted to resuscitate the toddler but were unsuccessful. The release stated that the boy was found after an exhaustive search of his Pensacola neighborhood.

FORT WALTON BEACH — No firm date has been announced, but all signs point to the region’s final Blockbuster video rental store closing its doors in February of next year if not sooner.

Blockbuster’s lease for its rental store on Mary Esther Cutoff expires in February 2014, and building owner Liberty Properties out of Auburn, Ala., has been informed the company will not renew its lease.

Liberty Properties, which has owned the building for about 10 years, recently placed a sign advertising the building as available for lease or purchase.

“It’s in a great location and we feel really confident about it,” said Misty Patterson with Liberty Properties. “We’ve had so many calls on it.”

A spokesperson for Dish Network, which purchased Blockbuster in 2011 for $320 million, told CNN in January that they would close roughly 300 Blockbuster stores this year, with some of them being closed as their leases expired. Blockbuster currently has about 500 stores remaining in the country, down from its peak of more than 9,000 stores in 2004.

Representatives from Blockbuster’s media relations department did not return multiple telephone and email requests to comment on this story.

The Fort Walton Beach store is the final Blockbuster location in Okaloosa, Walton and Santa counties. It is also one of the last boxed video rental stores left from an industry that started only about 30 years ago and hit its peak about 10 years ago. Since that time, the industry has been taken over by kiosk businesses such as Red Box and mail-in and streaming services such as Netflix.

“(The industry has) changed,” said Tricia Brunson, president and CEO of the Niceville Valparaiso Chamber of Commerce. “Unfortunately, we don’t have the personal touch any more.”

Patterson said the 7,000-square-foot building is available to lease at $18 a square foot or purchase for $1.2 million. Although Blockbuster’s lease expires in February, they have informed Liberty Properties they would be willing to get out of their lease early. For more information on the availability of the Blockbuster building, call Liberty Properties at 334-821-1600.

Contact Daily News Business Editor Dusty Ricketts at 850-315-4448 or dricketts@nwfdailynews.com. Follow him on Twitter @DustyRnwfdn.

FORT WALTON BEACH – A man who was drunk and behaving strangely scared off visitors to the Indian Temple Mound in downtown Fort Walton Beach, resulting in his arrest.

On May 22 Fort Walton Beach Police were summoned to the temple mound to deal with what a caller reported was a drunken man staggering down the sidewalk with a beer in his hand and waving his arms wildly. The caller said the man caused people to get back in their vehicles and leave the area, and she was offended by the man’s behavior.

She said she “could not believe people could act like this in public,” the officer wrote in the arrest report.

Officers arrived at the area and found the 49-year-old homeless man drinking a beer. They said he smelled strongly of alcohol, had slurred speech, and water eyes.

He was charged with disorderly intoxication. His court date is June 11.

NICEVILLE – A local man was arrested for throwing a Molotov cocktail at a car belonging to a man who had pointed him out to police for driving while intoxicated, according to an arrest report.

The man, 22-year-old Michael Austin Milum, was accused of hurling a glass bottle filled with Coleman camping fluid at the car as it was parked in the driveway of the victim’s grandfather, Niceville Police say.

The man had been instrumental in Milum’s arrest earlier this year for DUI. The man said Milum had been following him and was harassing him at work.

Milum was seen in Walmart video purchasing two glass bottles and a gallon of the camping fuel, along with gloves. The type of glass found at the scene matched the kind of bottles he purchased, police say, and a fingerprint on one of the glass fragments recovered at the scene was Milum’s.

Milum was arrested on May 23 charged with use of explosives – throwing a projectile. His court date is June 25.
 

FORT WALTON BEACH – When a pharmacist received a call to have a Lortab prescription refilled, he became suspicious and did some checking.

Sure enough, the person needing the prescription refilled had died in April.

The pharmacist called police.

They in turn arrested 29-year-old Aimee Nicole Stokes of Fort Walton Beach, who they say called the pharmacy at Winn-Dixie and pretended to be her mother, who had passed away earlier this year. The pharmacy staff say the caller said she’d lost her prescription bottle and asked them to look up her information. When their records indicated the woman had died, they called her doctor, who confirmed the death.

The pharmacist told the caller to come in and pick up the prescription. A Fort Walton Beach Police officer was waiting for her.

When he asked why she was trying to pick up a prescription for a dead person, Stokes said she didn’t know it was against the law and was trying to get the Lortab “in case someone got hurt,” the officer wrote in the arrest report.

She was charged with prescription fraud, a felony. Her court date is July 9.
 

Disbarred attorney James Harvey Tipler was sentenced to 30 years in prison Monday morning for his efforts to have Assistant State Attorney Russ Edgar killed.

Later in the day, the 62-year-old Tipler agreed to plead no contest to one count of racketeering and one count of practicing law without a license.

He received an 80- month prison sentence followed by eight years of probation on those charges, which will be served concurrently with the 30-year sentence.

The plea deal brings to a close a criminal prosecution that had dragged on for four years.

The negotiated plea will save taxpayers at least $50,000. That’s what it would have taken to conduct a three-week trial scheduled to get under way Wednesday, said State Attorney Bill Eddins.

“I’m very pleased with the resolution. I feel it was appropriate,” Eddins commented when the long day of court hearings and negotiations concluded about 3 p.m.

Tipler was arrested for the first time on racketeering  (maintaining a criminal enterprise) charges in 2009 when state attorney’s office investigators, led by Edgar, busted the then-suspended attorney’s immigration business.

Two years and two arrests on the same charges later, Tipler was ordered to await trial at the Okaloosa County Jail.

It was from there that he hatched his plan to have Edgar killed.

At a trial that ended May 7 with a verdict of guilty on two of three counts, prosecutor Bobby Elmore showed how Tipler had solicited three fellow inmates — Dion Lowe, Wallace Morris and fellow disgraced attorney R. Scott Whitehead — to help him plan Edgar’s demise.

During Monday’s sentencing hearing, Elmore summoned the ghosts of prosecuting attorneys throughout American history who had been killed in their line of duty.

“James Harvey Tipler did everything he could to put Russ Edgar on that list,” Elmore argued, and therefore deserved a state maximum 60-year prison term.

“The ghosts of 13 murdered attorneys, and their families and friends, demand such a sentence. Nothing else would be justice,” Elmore told the court.

Okaloosa County Judge T. Patterson Maney gave Elmore half of what he wanted. Elmore said after the hearing he could live with the judge’s decision.

“It’s a de facto life sentence,” Elmore said afterward. “I was serious in every word I said about the maximum sentence being appropriate, but when you get down to the practical effect, 30 years was a life sentence.”

Tipler’s attorney, Clyde Taylor, had argued since the beginning of the solicitation for murder trial that the First Judicial Circuit state attorney’s office should not be trying the case, as it involved one of its own.

In arguing for a reasonable prison term for his client, one far shorter than what the prosecution was recommending, Taylor said Elmore’s passion only underscored his point.

“Obviously the comments of the prosecutor are no doubt heartfelt. It’s how the feelings in that office run,” he said. “That’s why we asked somebody else to try this case.”

After the hearing, Taylor also recalled that the three inmates who testified against Tipler had received lenient treatment from the state attorney’s office. Among those is  Morris, who has shot two people in the chest in his criminal career and was recently sentenced to  three years in prison.

“My take on it is this office never should have prosecuted this case,” Taylor said after the hearing. “How they can ask for 60 years when they gave Morris a walk?”

Eddins said the 80-month sentence on the racketeering and  unlicensed practice of law charges, which cannot under terms of the negotiated deal be appealed, will ensure that Tipler serves prison time even in the event the solicitation for murder charges are overturned on appeal.

Taylor notified the court Monday he does intend to appeal the May 7 conviction.

Edgar, who was going to be present to help prosecute Tipler if the racketeering case went to trial, said the 80-month sentence agreed to Monday was “justified.”

“He abused the trust of so many people who thought he was an attorney who could help them,” Edgar said of Tipler. “He used them to obtain their money so he could maintain his excessive lifestyle. It’s egregious what he did.”
 

Contact Daily News Staff Writer Tom McLaughlin at 850-315-4435 or tmclaughlin@nwfdailynews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TomMnwfdn.