At the Very Least: February

St. Augustine Man Dies In Iraq

Sgt. Bryan Joseph Tutten became the first St. Johns County native to die in a war-related incident in Iraq when he was killed Christmas day by a roadside bomb.
Tutten, a St. Augustine resident, was on his second tour of duty in Iraq, serving with the 82nd Airborne out of Fort Bragg, N.C. Tutten was a rifleman and squad leader of an infantry company with a wife and two
small children.
The Army casualty assistance officers told Tutten’s family he was killed while on operations in Tikrit and implied it was due to an improvised explosive device, said Gary Peterson, who retired as a lieutenant colonel after 33 years in the Army National Guard.
Tutten enlisted in the U.S. Army six years ago and deployed for his second tour of duty in Iraq in November 2006.
He was born in St. Augustine, attended St. Joseph Academy, graduated from St. Augustine High School and attended St. Johns River Community College. He was a member of Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church of St. Augustine.
Tutten was an avid sportsman who loved to fish and cook.
“He was a very good family man who would spend hours playing with his daughter,” Peterson said.

Ministers opposed to teaching intelligent design in public schools and a retired science teacher who said the theory of evolution could be in conflict with science itself, were among the 48 people who shared their wide range of opinions in January at a public hearing about Florida’s science standards.
The new standards, set to go before the State Board of Education on Feb. 19, have been at the center of a statewide debate about how evolution should be taught in Florida’s public schools. The standards call for some element of evolution to be taught every year starting in kindergarten.
The new standards were drafted last May after Florida received several negative reviews for its science curriculum, including an F grade from the Fordham Institute. Among its criticisms, the institute gave Florida zero of three possible points in the evolution category.

Three young women have filed lawsuits against the City of St. Augustine Beach and St. Johns County Sheriff David Shoar, claiming they were strip-searched after being charged with underage possession of alcohol, a misdemeanor.
Also named in the suit, which requests a jury trial, are St. Augustine Beach Police Officer J. Wallace and “Jane Doe,” a booking officer at the St. Johns County jail.
The three women denied having anything to drink before they were arrested at a St. Augustine Beach house party, according to the suit filed Dec. 6 by the Jacksonville law firm of William J. Sheppard.
They were not seen actually holding alcohol, the suit charges. Since alcohol was around them at the party, they were charged with “constructive possession.”
Essentially, they had access to alcohol if they wanted it.
However, all three women tested .000 in a Breathalyzer test at the jail, the suit said.
They were nonetheless “forced by Deputy Sheriff Jane Doe to disrobe in front of the correctional staff of the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office against their will and put on a jail uniform,” according to the suit.
The three spent the remainder of the night in the jail until they were released on bond.
Shoar said the women weren’t strip-searched and were in a private room when they had to change clothes.