In brief: Zimmerman website raised $200,000
Sanford, Fla. – The now-defunct website George Zimmerman set up to solicit donations from supporters raised more than $200,000, his lawyer said in a Florida courtroom Friday – one week after Zimmerman’s family argued that it had meager assets with which to pay his bond.
The new development could prompt Seminole County Circuit Judge Kenneth R. Lester Jr. to increase the $150,000 bond he set earlier – though the judge said Friday that he wanted to know more about who controls the money before ruling on the matter.
Zimmerman, a former neighborhood watch volunteer, has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder in the February slaying of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager whom Zimmerman encountered one evening and considered to be suspicious.
Zimmerman, 28, acknowledges that he shot the 17-year-old, but says he did so in self-defense.
Zimmerman established the website earlier this month, and used it to solicit funds for his legal defense and living expenses. His attorney, Mark O’Mara, instructed him to shut it down, and it disappeared from the Web earlier this week.
Yacht races rerouted after deadly accident
San Francisco – The U.S. Coast Guard has temporarily suspended offshore yacht racing in the San Francisco Bay Area after an accident earlier this month killed five of eight crew members near the rugged Farallon Islands.
At least two races, one scheduled for today, will be rerouted while US Sailing – the sport’s national governing body – conducts an independent review of Bay Area offshore racing procedures. Coast Guard officials said they also were “calling on all offshore race organizers and participants to conduct their own safety stand-downs during this period.”
Woman alleges dentist left screwdriver behind
Louisville, Ky. – A Kentucky woman is suing a dentist, accusing him of dropping a small screwdriver down her throat that migrated to her digestive tract and later required surgery to remove.
The lawsuit was filed Thursday in Fayette Circuit Court in Lexington by 71-year-old Lena David, of Nicholasville. David claims Dr. W.B. Galbreath told her to try to regurgitate the screwdriver and then sent her for X-rays when that did not work.
Galbreath did not return a message left at his office Friday by the Associated Press.
The lawsuit says that the X-rays showed the screwdriver in David’s stomach, and that the dentist discharged her with instructions to “eat a diet high in fiber.”
In June 2011, about a month after swallowing the screwdriver, David checked into a hospital with abdominal pain and had to have the screwdriver removed.