Top 100 Volusia County Stories

DAYTONA BEACH -- It was a new year, but life just wasn't the same for 92-year-old Floyd Snyder who leaped to his death Jan. 2, from his 9th-floor condominium balcony, police reported.

Friends and relatives told police Snyder was despondent because his wife, Leonia, who was in failing health, did not recognize him when he went to see her at a nursing home. According to a police report, he called the front desk at the Towers Condominium just before 8 a.m. and said he was going to jump.

NEW SMYRNA BEACH -- An 84-year-old woman was found Thanksgiving Day living in deplorable conditions in a home near New Smyrna Beach along with about 50 cats, 15 turkeys, 20 ducks and a dog, Volusia Sheriff's spokesman Brandon Haught said, adding deputies learned she had apparently been living in the home against her will, having been set up there by her daughter.

OSTEEN -- A 24-year-old Osteen man was pumping gas Dec. 5 at the Sunoco on State Road 415, when he was shot to death by a man who pulled into the station in a pick-up truck.

Christopher Joseph Mclellan suffered multiple gunshot wounds to the chest in the 7 p.m. incident and was transported by EVAC ambulance to Florida Hospital Fish Memorial in Orange City, where he was pronounced dead shortly after arrival.

NEW SMYRNA BEACH -- For the third time in two days on Sept. 10, Florida satellite offices of Congressman Tom Feeney have been targeted by mailings containing flour that staffers feared might have been the deadly anthrax -- the first to his Port Orange office and two others at his offices in Orlando and Titusville.

"Obviously, it was sent to his office(s) to be disruptive," said Ed Moffitt, a spokesman for the U.S. Postal Inspection Service in Orlando. "The individual may have a contrary point with whatever the representative's office is doing."

DAYTONA BEACH -- A father and son were arrested April 17, on multiple drug charges after narcotics agents seized 7 pounds of marijuana and about 102 grams of cocaine from a Daytona Beach home where the father lives.

The East Volusia Narcotics Task Force also seized a firearm, cash, 18 Ecstasy pills and a digital scale during a search of 160 Gala Circle. The contraband was found inside a house where 57-year-old Dennis Kennedy lives. He was the only one home when drug agents arrived with a search warrant, the Sheriff's Office reported.

DELTONA -- Human remains, including a skull, were found in a wooded area of Deltona on Nov. 6, by two teenagers.

The teens stumbled across the remains in some woods east of Alex Lane. While the remains will require further analysis,
investigators say they appear to be that of an adult.

PONCE INLET -- Several kids playing ball near the beach came upon a grisly discovery April 19, when their ball landed in someone's backyard: Mostly skeletal remains of a human being.

The adult male has been dead for months, according to a report from the Volusia County Sheriff's Office, which is treating the 6:30 p.m. discovery of the bones as a suspicious death. An autopsy is expected to be done today by the Volusia County Medical Examiner's Office in hopes of determining a cause of death.

DAYTONA BEACH -- Brandon Wright, a back-up quarterback and running back on the Bethune-Cookman University football squad, was arrested April 7, in his dorm room on charges of attempted murder and trafficking in cocaine after he pointed a shotgun at a man who owed him money, according to Daytona Beach police.

Besides attempted murder, Wright was charged with trafficking in cocaine, home invasion robbery, false imprisonment and trafficking cocaine within 1,000 feet of a school.

NEW SMYRNA BEACH -- Even though they were accused of trashing his home by spraying fire extinguishers, throwing eggs and leaving the water running in the kitchen after break-in in mid-July, Chick-fil-A restaurant founder S. Truett Cathy didn't want to see three pre-teen girls have juvenile records so he came up with an alternative punishment in a deal with their parents: They each had to write 1,000 times, "I will not vandalize other people's property."

The girls also were not allowed to watch TV or play video games for six months and each had to read a book.

DAYTONA BEACH -- Teen golf sensation Michelle Wie had played in 53 of 69 tournaments either through exemptions or invitations. On Dec. 7, she went back to school, Q-school that is, at the LPGA course, to earn her way into becoming a card-carrying member of the Ladies Professional Golf Association.

The 19-year-old Wie finished tied for 6th, with a 2-over 74, easily among the top 20 who were allowed to continue on the tour.