The Palm Beach Post from West Palm Beach, Florida • Page 83

The Palm Beach Post MONDAY, JANUARY 5, 1998 SECTION WOMAN DIES A Lake Worth man in is jail after police find him outside crying that he shot his girlfriend. STORY, 2B jr. 1 Sotstss A nail of nighttime comfort Palm Beach Shores rejects fire chief's decision to disable siren LOCAL NEWS By Ian Trontz Palm Beach Post Staff Writer PALM BEACH SHORES At 1 a.m. on Dec. 22, a pickup crashed through a seawall and landed atop a boat moored at a local marina.

A piercing wail shot through the town. Several blocks away from the scene, Carol Dawson awoke. She hadn't heard such a volunteers ultrasonically. Palm Beach Shores' 25 volunteers also use pagers, making the siren somewhat redundant. And some residents don't like to wake up for no sound reason.

"It disturbs the peace, and it could give some person a heart attack," one woman wrote in a Please see SIREN3? cacophony in months. It could mean only one thing. The siren's song was back. "That good old siren, it's music to our ears," said Dawson, 59. Lately, the volunteer firefighter siren has set off more controversy here than the local hedge-height ordinance.

Palm Beach Shores (pop. 1,028) is the last town in the county that still employs a siren to summon the citizen brigade. Not counting the test alarm every Saturday at noon, the siren goes off roughly once a week for actual fires and, more often, for false alarms or downed power lines. Other towns have either grown large enough to hire full-time firefighters or have switched to a radio-pager system that alerts Ok. ALISON REDLICHStafT Photographer Palm Beach Shores Fire Chief Larrv Fauci let town residents de cide if they wanted to hear the siren wail again at night.

1 IW Vlprhtriifcl! acauirei to 1 La Ouinta inn chain Mk By Matt Mossman Palm Beach Post Staff Writer i 0 Palm Beach entrepreneur Abe I I' Photos by JEAN HART HOWARDStaff Photographer The crowd of about 300 swimmers enters the water at Spanish River Park on Sunday morning to swim a mile in the second of four races this month. man's Meditrust Cos. wants to acquire' La Quinta Inns Inc. for about $3 billionjn stock, cash and assumed debt The merger, announced Sunday, vSK ues La Quinta at $26 per share. The merger price tag will be paid with $2.1 billion in cash and stock, and $900 million of assumed debt.

Meditrust, which owns 14 healthcare facilities in Palm Beach County and the Treasure Coast, is a real estate investment trust that buys and operates health care facilities. It also owns the! Brazilian Court hotel in Palm Beach, i Merging with LaQuinta nearly dou-f bles Meditxust's assets, 'and signals its; expansion into areas other than health! care facilities. Meditrust President David Benson said that Massachusetts-based Meditrust is a $4 billion company and includ-! ing LaQuinta makes it worth $7 million. that this won't be the last acquisition Meditrust makes," Benson said. He explained that Meditrust is also looking to buy golf courses and retirement communities.

San Antonio-based LaQuinta Inns is a chain of 234 moderately priced roadside motels and 36 upscale inns. LaQuinta has recently introduced the La-! Quinta Inn and Suites, an upscale version of its motels. One hundred In i and Suites are planned, but Chief Oper ating Officer Ezzat Coutry said more; could be on the way. Coutry said LaQuinta will be an-: nouncing a Boca Raton location, andj hopes to have 35 Florida locations by mid-1999. Coutry said the merger was suggest- ed by Merrill Lynch, with whom La-' Quinta had contracted.

"We asked Merrill Lynch to do some'8 strategic analysis, and they got in touch1 with Meditrust's bankers, then we all, met in December," said Coutry, who will! be LaQuinta's new chief executive offi- cer when the merger is finalized. He doesn't expect significant: changes in LaQuinta's operations or; strategy. "Part of the criteria for the merger is the strong management team at La-: Quinta," Meditrust's Benson said. Gosman, who could not be reached, Sunday, will remain chairman of the; merged company. The deal is expected to close in the second quarter.

Meditrust also has recently acquirtii a horseracing track in Santa Anita, In addition, Gosman is involved it helping an Indian Tribe, in get a gaming license, and also runs; PhyMatrix, a West Palm Beach-based company that oversees doctor's offices'! Hardy hit waves for swim series Some of the less-able swimmers stayed on the beach in Boca Raton rather than fight the surf. Mi 1 -j'" 1 4 of a four-race series held throughout Broward and Palm Beach counties. The next race is scheduled for Saturday in Deer-field Beach and the championship race Sunday in Hollywood. Tom Swift, 25, a member of the Defray BeachBoca Raton lifeguard team, was the overall male winner, and Andie Scensi, 17, was overall female winner. At least seven teams participated in the race, including a 45-member swim team from Ken-yon College in Ohio.

John Acton, a Boca Raton lifeguard, participated in the morning race then spent his afternoon guarding the few who ventured into the rough waters. "I like to get in shape and compete," Acton said. "At the same time, it's a lot of fun." By Alexandra Navarro Clifton Palm Beach Post Staff Writer BOCA RATON Braving the rough, cold waves, nearly 300 swimmers participated in the second race of the first Nike Ocean Mile Swim Series in Spanish River Park Sunday morning. Sunday's forecasted 20 to 25 mph winds contributed to the 3- to 5-foot waves that kept some less-experienced swimmers on the beach. At the first race of the series earlier in Del-ray Beach, about 100 people registered, race director Steve Griffith said.

"The rough waters probably scared some people away, but about 280 out of 300 who registered showed up," Griffith said. Sunday's competition is part was too rough and cold for 10-year-old Todd Sul-ley on Sunday, so he was rewarded with a hug from his father, Mike, after dropping out of the race. Belle Glade citizens seek police review board 1 of 2 Lotto winners bought ticket in Jupiter ft 'This would never happen (officers) knew that they could get into trouble and be held accountable. BUTLER BROWN JR. Son of man charged with stalking; he was in jail 50 days before being released; the charges were later dismissed extortion and conspiracy charges.

The mayor at the time called COBY and the lawyers who helped "dangerous threats to our community." A St. Petersburg congressman accused them of misusing federal money to foment trouble. Ultimately, commissioners went to Congress to denounce the activists as a "revolutionary youth organization seditious, hostile and un-American." Glover, now 48, says he's not interested in resurrecting an old crusade. But, he says, a review board is still needed. "We have a new person interested," Glover says, "and the person who's interested now was (barely) alive then." West Palm Beach officials considered starting a police review panel after a man died in a fight Please, see REVIEW B0ARDJZJ By Jennifer Peltz Palm Beach Post Staff Writer BELLE GLADE By requesting citizen watchdogs for city police, some residents are kicking up dust that settled from a storm 27 years ago.

Marvin Glover would rather not look at it that way, but he knows better than most. Glover, who was at the center of that storm, is now the vice president of the local branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The group is urging officials in this predominantly black city to appoint a police review board. Butler Brown a schoolteacher with a criminology degree and questions about what he considers his father's wrongful arrest, has since led the campaign. He asked the city commission several times late last year to either estab- final Lotto jackpot, a $51.5 million triple-rollover, has been presented for claim.

Those tickets were sold in Sebastian and Pensacola. In addition to Saturday's $7 million jackpot winners, the following payouts were announced: 220 winners matched 5 of 6 and won $1,434.50. 11,964 winners matched 4 of 6 and won $63. 220,162 winners matched 3 of 6 and won $4.50. Next Lotto drawing will offer a prize estimated at $8 million.

Post Staff and Wire Reports The first Florida Lotto of the new year rang in good fortune for ticket-holders in Jupiter and Orange City, lottery officials in Tallahassee said Sunday. The winning Lotto numbers drawn Saturday were 9-22-24-31-38-42. The winners will share an estimated $7 million jackpot. The exact stores where the two tickets were sold will not be known until the tickets are presented for payment, lottery officials said. Meanwhile, neither of the two winning tickets in 1997's lish a review or let voters elect the police chief or both.

So far, officials say they don't see the need. And, they say, sometimes review boards can do more harm than good. Glover, who introduced the idea at a commission meeting in August, was also one of the local activists who almost exactly 27 years before first marched on Belle Glade City Hall to demand a review board. White spectators watched then as the group Cry of Black Youth demonstrated armed with rifles and revolvers, and one Lions Club member suggested awards for police officers who arrested the most activists. The police openly tape-recorded COBY's meetings and photographed those entering its headquarters.

White merchants accused Glover and other COBY members of making threats while soliciting donations for a free breakfast program. Ajjury acquitted them of the.