Local News Now

NEW SMYRNA BEACH -- Area poets are invited to read at an Open Mic Poetry Festival at 2 p.m. Saturday, May 16, at the New Smyrna Beach Regional Library.

The event is sponsored in part by the Friends of the Library and hosted by the Poet’s Corner Poetry Workshop of New Smyrna Beach. There is no charge and light refreshments will be served.

The New Smyrna Beach Regional Library is open seven days a week at 1001 S. Dixie Freeway. For more information, please call (386) 424-2910.

What was that I just heard? Surely that can’t be true. Let me rewind the tape and hear that again, I said to myself. Sure enough what I heard was that if you have a Florida Food Stamp Debit card and you have a question about it when you call the phone number you reach a representative in India.

NEW SMYRNA BEACH -- Mystery-novel readers can get a dose of the real thing during “Murder, Mayhem and Mystery – Behind the Scenes,” a lecture
series at the New Smyrna Beach Regional Library.

Guest speakers will take mystery lovers behind the crime scene tape to explain what really happens and why. Adults are invited to these lectures, which will be from 6 - 7 p.m. May 4, 6 and 7 in the library’s auditorium. Light refreshments will be served.

NEW SMYRNA BEACH – A 20-year-old Okeechobee man became the second shark-bite victim of 2009 in the New Smyrna Beach surf when a shark punctured his right ankle late Monday afternoon, the Volusia County Beach Patrol said.

The unidentified man was surfing in front of the Minorca Condominium, 2600 block of North Peninsula Drive, when the shark bit into his right ankle, an injury described by Volusia County Beach Patrol Capt. Scott Petersohn as "very minor -- two or three puncture wounds."

NEW SMYRNA BEACH -- April has arrived, and with it, Earth Month. A "Recycled Art Walk" will be held on Flagler Avenue in New Smyrna Beach, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.,
Saturday, April 25.

The Citizens Resource Group on Recycling will be on hand to present information about recycling in our community and what you can specifically do to help our environment: "Think Globally, Act Locally."

The Atlantic Center for the Arts Volunteer League will man a table and children will be shown how to make art with recycled materials. ACA will also offer information about their community programming.

NEW SMYRNA BEACH – A 22-year-old man was shot in both legs Sunday night when a bullet passed through one and lodged in the other, New Smyrna Beach piolice said.

Amario Dempsey, 22, New Smyrna Beach, was admitted to Bert Fish Medical Center for the gunshot wounds following the 8:30 p.m. shooting at North Myrtle and Rose Court, police Sgt. Valerie Joyce said.

Police responded to numerous 9-1-1 calls of shots fired, but when police arrived at the scene, they were told by bystanders that a witness to the shooting took the victim to the hospital.

Courtesy photo. Edgewater Fire Rescue extinguished a fire that damaged parts of two homes and destroyed a boat Sunday night on Tule Tree Drive.

EDGEWATER -- Two homes were damaged and a boat destroyed by a fire Sunday night on Yule Tree Drive.

The garage of one home in the 2900 block was damaged as were the eves of the home next door.

Courtesy photo. Bats like this one can eat up to 3,000 insects in one night.

Bats are beautiful because, most of the time, they make life for humans much easier. They are the most important controller of might-flying insects.

Experts with Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission report that a single bat can eat up to 3,000 insects a night.

NEW SMYRNA BEACH -- A 22-year-old Edgewater man was critically injured when he lost control of his motorcycle early Thursday morning in the 100 block of South Dixie Freeway and crashed in the mrdian, New Smyrna Beach police said.

The biker's name is being withheld until family memberscan be notified, police said. He was airlifted to Haslifax Medical Center in Daytona Beach following the 2 a.m. crash between Second and Third streets, said Sgt. Christopher Roos.

The victim suffered head and leg injuries, police said, but did not indicate whether he was wearing a helmet.

NEW SMYRNA BEACH -- Despite pleas from citizens led by Bouchelle Island resident William Kolesczar for the immediate hiring of outside counsel to invalidate the longstanding waterfront lease of city-owned waterfront property with the Angler's Club, commissioners led by the mayor Tuesday night said at least one more meeting should be held.