News-Press from Fort Myers, Florida • Page 22

5B NEWS-PRESS, FRIDAY. JANUARY 12, 1990 I CHARLOTTE I 741 A COUNTY STADIUM (fa i PORT CHARLOTTE Edgewater Dr. Zkarlolte Harbor 3:30 p.m. The Shoppe Variety Band followed by Country Music star Jerry Reed. 5 p.m.

Robinson's Racing Pigs 6 p.m. David Hamilton, The Balloon Man 6:30 p.m. Robinson's Racing Pigs 7:30 p.m. Robinson's Racing Pigs 8 p.m. The Shoppe Variety Band followed by Country Music star Jerry Reed 9:30 p.m.

David Hamilton, The Balloon Man 10:30 p.m. Robinson's Racing Pigs How to get there: From Collier and Lee counties, take In- 11 p.m. to 3 a.m. Midnight Madness, unlimited rides sponsored by Pepsi and 96 K-Rock; $10 per person or $8 if participants bring a Pepsi can. SATURDAY noon The Shoppe Variety Band 1 p.m.

David Hamilton, Balloon Man 2:30 p.m. Robinson's Racing Pigs 3:30 p.m. The Shoppe Variety Band followed by country music stars The Girls Next Door 5 p.m. Robinson's Racing Pigs 6 p.m. David Hamilton, The Balloon Man 6:30 p.m.

Robinson's Racing Pigs 7:30 p.m. Robinson's Racing Pigs 9:30 p.m. David Hamilton, The Balloon Man 10:30 p.m. Robinson's Racing Pigs SUNDAY FAMILY DAY Half-price gate admissions all day. Closing day of the fair.

noon The Shoppe Variety Band 12:30 p.m. Robinson's Racing Pigs 1 p.m. David Hamilton, The Balloon Man 2:30 p.m. Robinson's Racing Pigs The Charlotte County Fair funs noon to midnight today, Saturday and Sunday at the Charlotte County Stadium in El Jobean. Admission tickets: At the stadium only, cost is $4 for people 18 or older, $2 for children 5 to 17, children under 5 free and senior citizens can get a 50 percent discount between noon and 4 p.m.

There is an additional cost for selected shows. TODAY noon The Shoppe Variety Band 1 p.m. David Hamilton, Balloon Man 2:30 p.m. Robinson's Pigs 3 p.m. The Shoppe Variety Band 4 p.m.

David Hamilton, Balloon Man 4:30 p.m. Robinson's Racing Pigs 6 p.m. Robinson's Racing Pigs 6:30 p.m. The Shoppe Variety Band followed by a talent showcase featuring local entertainment 8:30 p.m. Robinson's Racing Pigs 9 p.m.

David Hamilton, Balloon Man 10 p.m. The Shoppe Variety Band 10:30 p.m. Robinson's Racing Pigs Mugged cyclist gets new bike, hits day for a campout for the homeless in the nation's capital that began Christmas and is expected to last until April 15. He started his trip from Fort Myers on Christmas Eve, riding a bicy-cle donated by Micky Franklin, owner of Micky Franklin's Wholesale Tire and Bike Land in North Fort Myers and Cape Coral. BRENTNER Franklin was sorry to hear of Brentner's misfortune, and hope to organize additional bike dealer support and press coverage for Brentner.

"His intentions are good," Franklin said. The recent trip is Brentner's second bike trek for the homeless. His first one took him from Fort Myers to Washington, D.C., for the Oct. 7 Housing Now! march in the nation's capital. All of Lee answers call of DQlphin From trainers of television's Flipper and a contingent of environmentalists.

The young dolphin, popping to the surface every 30 to 60 seconds and occassionally taking a long gander at the world above, has captured the hearts and imaginations of hundreds of tourists and residents in the past few days, said Paul Supre, a Sanibel police aide assigned to patrol the dolphin site. Among environmentalists groups, the sight of the dolphin circling and trapped by its own sonar has stirred a wave of concern. They fear unjustifiably, biologists say that the dolphin will be captured by an aquarium and kept in captivity. Rumors abound about the dolphin's future, said Bob Wasno, a biologist with the state Division of Marine Resources in Fort Myers. But they 're just that rumors.

People are calling public officials at all levels of government worried that the dolphin will be plucked from Shooting two went to a lake near Punta Gorda, where he went swimming, she said. They went to her place and went to bed, she said. As they were leaving her trailer, they encountered Brown's mother, who had never liked Delgado and who yelled at him, Brown said. Delgado then left for North Fort Myers, saying he was going to kill Joe King, with whom Brown had used cocaine on occasion, she testified. She told jurors there was a gun case in his pick-up truck, and it felt as if it contained a gun.

She said she called King to warn him, but King said he knew Delgado was on his way. "Be careful, he's crazy," Brown said she told King. "And how did he respond to that?" Ahlbrand asked. "He told me he wasn't worried about it, that Steve (Delgado) was his brother," she said. Near the end of her testimony, Ahlbrand asked Brown to read the note she said she put on Delgado's door after he left for North Fort Myers Valentine's Day.

"Poppy, I came by to pick up my stuff. I work tomorrow until 3. Happy Valentine's Day. I love you, me," Brown read. She answered yes when Ahlbrand asked if she still loved Delgado.

Under aggressive cross-examination by VanZamft, she repeated that claim. "And today, because you love him, you're trying to put him in jail, right?" VonZamft asked Brown. "I'm not trying to put him in jail," Brown retorted. "I'm trying to do what's right." Through an interpreter, Figueros testified that Delgado stood over King's dead body and said, "Now you won't fool with my wife anymore." Some of Figueros' testimony conflicted with that of another eyewitness, Manolo Sepero, a fifth-generation circus acrobat from North Fort terstate 75 north to exit 30, and go west on Harborview Road to U.S. Highway 41.

Join Charlotte county residents northbound on U.S. 41 to State Road 776, turn west and the stadium is more than a mile down the road on the left. page 1B the canal and shipped to an aquarium, he said. Their fears are fueled by the fact that Sea World, an aquarium with captive dolphins, is sending one of its experts down to Sanibel today to help area biologists coax the dolphin out to sea, he said. "But nobody understands that all we want to do is get the dolphin from one side of the bridge (which runs over the top of the culvert) to the other and we just want to do it as safely as possible," Wasno said.

The Sea World employee is not part of a capture team; he is a netting expert, Wasno said. Area biologists will use a large net today in an attempt to prod the mammal forward and through the canal tunnel, he said. Once it makes it beyond the bridge, it's on its way to the wild. But if anything should go wrong with the rescue plan, such as the dolphin charging into the net and then panicking, the Sea World expert will know exactly what to do, Wasno said. Myers.

Sepero, who said he was be hind King when King was shot, testified there was a struggle between the two men. And he said he didn't see Delgado take a gun into King's house. An autopsy of King revealed a wound on his thumb that the medical examiner said could have been caused by his thumb being pinched in the mechanism that ejects empty shell casings from an automatic weapon. The injury was consistent with somebody who grabbed an automatic weapon in the course of a struggle, Dr. Carol Huser testified.

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The 54-year-old San Diego native was jumped from behind Satur- day in Tampa by two men who took his bike, backpack and wallet and left him lying in the street, reports said. "I had enough sense not to fight back and I wasn't hurt," said Brentner, who wound up with a black eye and cut lip. Brentner plans to head out to Old bones are linked to man, 60 By EVA KINSEY POWELL News-Press Staff Writer The skull and bones found last week in Lehigh Acres have been identified as those of a white man approximately 60 years old who died between two and five years ago. The partial description was released Thursday by the C.A. Pond Institute's human identification laboratory in Gaines-.

ville, according to Robert Gra-ziano, spokesman for the Lee County Sheriff's Department. Investigators also have determined that the man was 5 feet, 11 inches tall and was large-boned. He wore a complete upper dental plate and the bones showed an old rib injury, fused vertebrae in his neck and a metal plate in his right leg, according to the report issued by Dr. William Maples, curator of the laboratory. "We can tell from the condition of the teeth and the overall oral hygiene that this was a man of a low socio-economic level," Maples said.

The bones were discovered a week ago in a remote wooded area of Lehigh Acres, on Norton Avenue South, off State Road 82 and Bell Boulevard. They were discovered by an Immokalee woman and her father, who were collecting palm fronds. The description of the man will be sent to state and national law-enforcement agencies, Grazianosaid. "They'll be able to go through their missing person files to see if it matches up," he said. So far, the description has not matched any person missing in Southwest Florida, Grazianosaid.

This isn't the end of the investigation, Maples said. "We have a lot of work to do to reconstruct the skeleton," Maples said. "We'll see if there are signs of injury. It's possible I can find some evidence of trauma at the time of death." The investigation shouldte complete in two or three weeks, Maples said. By EVA KINSEY POWELL News-Press Staff Writer The efforts to protect Southwest Florida's vulnerable palms following the Christmas weekend freeze has expanded from Fort Myers to all of Lee County.

Earlier this week, the City of Fort Myers offered to send workers to spray vulnerable palms with a copper fungicide for the city's cost of $10 per tree. Thursday, Lee County announced the same program at the same price. The difference is that the wait will be a little longer for the county residents. "We'll be able to start in two or three weeks first we have to take care of our trees and there are 3,500 of them in the right-of-ways," said John Yarbrough, parks director for Lee County. "We didn't start as quickly as Fort Myers because we were investigating all the possibilities other than spraying the tops of the trees, but we checked with experts and found their was no easier way," Yarbrough said.

The county is currently using two extension trucks to make the fungicide applications and they're hoping to add a third, he said. In the past three weeks, the county has gotten several hundred calls from residents who were worried about their royal, coconut and areca palms, according to county employees. The copper mixture retards the road again He's been working as a waiter and banquet worker in the Fort Myers area for the past year and doing volunteer work with the homeless. He expects to be peddling his way North over the next three to four weeks, averaging anywhere from 75 to 125 miles a day, depending on roads, weather, traffic and terrain. Brentner will stop at shelters along the way, hoping to draw attention to the homeless.

"I've become aware of the problems. When you go down, there's no place to go. "You have to work through labor pools. You need a working shelter that gives you a chance, where you can stay for more than one night, do laundry and have access a phone where people can call you about jobs. "When you have no address, no place to clean up, no clean clothes, it's hard to get an interview for a job.

You become handicapped." sick palms in and help both Cape Coral and Sanibel. "If the cities can't help, we'll step in we won't leave them stranded," Yarbrough said. Fort Myers residents can sign up for the service by calling 939-2200 and leaving their name, address and phone number. County residents can sign up by calling 335-2268. While local agencies are offering treatment for freeze-damaged palms, the Florida Department of Environmental Regulation is warning people to leave their damaged mangroves alone.

Mangroves are protected trees that live along the coast of Southwest Florida. They serve as protection against erosion and as a nursery for a multitude of marine species, including the spiney lobster, snook and tarpon. "They may look dead, but chances are they're not, said Mike Denzau, environmental specialist for the district DER office in Fort Myers. "We have no evidence to suggest that they're dead," Denzau said. "Some people think they can cut them if they're brown, but the same rules apply." The penalities for cutting mangroves with out a permit can be as much as $10,000 a day for each violation, Denzau said.

Denzau said that only the trees in the northernmost areas of Charlotte County are in danger of dying. "In most cases, we should see some new growth by the end of march. away from the first one. The 28-year-old woman told police she was stopped at the intersection and thought the man was going to walk around the back of her car. Instead he walked to the passenger side of the car, where her 5-year-old daughter was sleeping on the seat, grabbed the door handle and said, "Let me in, you She drove off and called police from home.

The woman, who is afraid to give her name because the suspect is on the loose, said she is still terrifed. "I've gotten two hours of sleep a night since it happened," she said. "I keep checking on my daughter. I have the same dream that he grabs her, starts running away and I can't catch him." The victim said she is grateful she had her car doors locked and the windows rolled up. in shooting he shot Lee twice in the head and once in the chest.

The shooting, according to Vimonphanh's statements to detectives, was caused "he (Vimonphanh) and the deceased had been for the past several months smoking crack. He believed that she was to blame He wanted to get those things out of his life," Graziano has said. If convicted, Vimonphanh could face death in Florida's electric chair. Thursday night Vimonphanh remained in jail without bond. Brentner said he had another bike stolen on that trip, and a bicycle company in Jacksonville gave him another one to finish the journey.

After that trip, Brentner, who is homeless, came back to Fort Myers and talked about his experiences at a meeting of the Southwest Florida Coalition for the Homeless. He also worked part-time delivering orders for Lidos Restaurant in downtown Fort Myers, Brentner said. He said he knows some of the problems homeless people face. He's been there. Brentner said he spent four months in a shelter in Albuquerque, N.M., in summer 1987 after a research and development company he was associated with was dissolved.

"I worked my way out of it," he said. "But you're always one paycheck from being back on the streets again." growth of a fungus that grows in the rotting pulp of palm fronds. It includes a pesticide that protects the trees from insects, said Victor Yingst, cooperative extention agent for Lee County. Cape Coral officials have received a few calls from residents wondering if the city was going to follow Fort Myers' lead. Raymond Haas, who has seven royal palms, all about 20 years old and "higher than a telephone pole," tried to get some help from the city on Thursday.

But Haas was told by city officials that there is no money to treat any palm trees or set up a program like the one in Fort Myers. "It's not the fact that we're callous," said Frank Rinella, city spokesman. "We don't have the budget for it and we're not the City of Palms" like Fort Myers is, so the situation is not comparable, he said. Cape Coral also does not have the trucks or equipment needed to spray the trees, Rinella said. Although Cape Coral has some royal palms, there are more sabal or cabbage palms throughout the city, said Joe Stonis, chairman of Cape Coral's Beautification Association.

These two types of palms are hardier and seem to have weathered the freeze better, he said. He is more worried about the more delicate coconut and queen palms in the city. A number of residents have called him asking for advice since the Christmas weekend's historic freeze, Stonis said. County officials say they will step raped. "The composites (of the suspects in the string of cases and the one case Friday) aren't even close," said detective Bill Scott, who is investigating Friday's incidents in Cape Coral.

The first case Friday occurred at 5:50 p.m. at Southeast 47th Terrace and Palm Tree Lane. In the initial report, the distraught 25-year-old victim told police she was stopped at the intersection when a man ran up to the passenger door of her car and tried to get into the vehicle. She drove away. But statements taken from the victim later that day revealed that the suspect did not actually approach or touch the woman's car, as she had first thought, said Durham.

The second incident occurred an hour and 40 minutes later at Southwest Second Place and Southwest 19th Street roughly five miles murder charge were drivng back to Pine Manor when the shooting occurred, Lee sheriff's spokesman Robert Grazia-no has said. Pine Manor is a neighborhood south of Fort Myers between U.S. Highway 41 and Summerlin Road. Near Metro Parkway and Colonial Boulevard, "He (Vimonphanh) pulled the gun out and, he said, he shot her three times without conversation or warning," Graziano said the day after Vimonphanh's arrest. Vimonphanh told deputies that to Abduction report not linked to rapes By MARILYN GARATEIX News-Press Staff Writer Cape Coral police officials do not believe a 28-year-old woman's report of an abduction attempt last Friday is related to a series of rapes and abductions that have plagued Lee County since November.

And a second reported abduction attempt that took place the same day, hours earlier, turned out not to be that at all, said Sgt. Craig Durham, Cape Coral's police information officer. There was a rash of sexual attacks and abductions in Lee County, including Cape Coral, between Nov. 10 and Dec. 14 in which a white man with light brown hair took over a victim's car in a relatively well-populated area and abducted the woman.

In some cases the women were attorney's spokeswoman Penny Walkersaid. About midnight on Dec. 20, Vimonphanh drove into the sallyport a secured carport where police vehicles park to unload or pick up prisoners at the Lee County Jail. Lee was slumped in the front of Vimonphanh's pickup truck, reports said. At the time of his arrest, Vimonphanh told deputies that he and Lee went to East Fort Myers to buy crack cocaine.

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PORT CHARLOTTE, 2726 Tamiami Trail 629-8902 PUNTA GORDA, 308 West Marion Ave. 639-4643 NORTH PORT, 12457 S. Tamiami Trail 426-3138 MasterCard, VISA, and Discover Card accepted at most area locations. Pine Manor man indicted on News-Press staff A Lee County grand jury on Thursday indicted a 29-year-old Pine Manor man on first-degree murder charges for allegedly shooting a woman and driving her body to the Lee County Jail. Akisak Akajack Vimonphanh, a factory worker who lives at 5439 1 1th was indicted in connection with the shooting death of Linda Suzanne Lee, 37, also of Pine Manor, state Alto in most ElaR BLOCK America's Tax Team!.