Top 100 Volusia County Stories of the year.
EDGEWATER -- Dorothy "Dot" Carlson, a leading environenmental voice from Edgewater who spoke out not only on city, but county and state environmental concerns such as keeping development in check and protection of wild animals, died Oct. 6, of lung cancer. She was 59.
DAYTONA BEACH -- Two brothers were arrested on homicide charges in connection with the Dec. 19 fatal shooting of a man in the back on Whitney Street, Daytona Beach police reported.
Channing Kendrick Black, 21, is charged with second-degree murder, and hois older brother, Matthew Howard Black, 40, both of Lockhart Street, was charged as a principle to second-degree murder, police said.
ORANGE CITY -- Two men armed with guns burst in through the front door of a home near Orange City the night of Dec. 13, but were in for a surprise themselves when they were chased off by a resident who was also armed, the Volusia County Sheriff's Office said.
DELAND -- Two teens charged with ploting to go on a killing spree at DeLand Middle School avoided jail time in favor of probation.
The sentences were reached in plea agreements in November for a boy and a girl, both 13, similar to that reached with a 14-year-old boy earlier, in which all three pleaded no contest to dusruption of a school function, a lesser charge than the initial conspiracy to commit murder. All three were also banned from interacting or placing comments on MySpace.com.
DELTONA -- An armed home invasion Dec. 14 in Deltona resulted in several shots being fired.
DELTONA -- A former youth pastor and missionary from Deltona is facing federal charges after Volusia County Sheriff's investigators found thousands of images of child pornography on the man's computer. Investigators wrapped up an eight-month investigation in mid-December with the indictment of Joel Price on two counts of distribution of child pornography and one count of possession of child pornography.
DEBARY -- The Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes, the Belmont Stakes, DeBary Downs. Not quite with the latter for Triple Crown thoroughbred racing, but still, a horse racing operation in DeBary is something an applicant is betting on.
DeBary Real Estate Holdings under the umbrella, Green Bridge Co., received a permit from the state of Florida in September to build a quarter-horse race track at U.S. 17-92 and Dirksen Drive.
PORT ORANGE -- It was a scheme that had Port Orange officials baffled. An employee was accused of depositing utility payments from customers over an unspecified period of time into her own personal checking account, but she wrote 278 personal checks to the city for $240,539.99, and so the city recovered all of its money.
Why the money was taken in the first place and returned has been a mystery.
DELAND -- Four days after the Nov. 4 general elections, Josh Wagner was declared the winner of the County Council District 2 seat when opponent Nancy Epps conceded defeat during the recount process
.
Even though 6,100 votes were still to be manually recounted, Epps, who was behind by 88 votes in a machine recount, threw in the towel.
DELTONA -- Raul Colon ended up in jail after finding a naked boy in his 15-year-old daughter's bedroom and striking him with a metal pipe on Sept. 11.
The 46-year-old father wasn't aware his daughter even had a boyfriend, but became suspicious when he heard noises coming from her bedroom about 4 a.m. when he went to take his dog out.
He retrieved a metal pipe from the garage, then opened the bedroom door and found the naked 15-year-old boy standing over his daughter's bed, the Volusia County Sheriff's Office reported.
