Three drown in Pine Hills community pool

Pine hills

Three drown in community pool

A father, his daughter and her friend all drowned in a Central Florida swimming pool.

Authorities say Philippe Casseus was reading by the porch of his Pine Hills home as he kept an eye on his 14-year-old daughter Ruth and her 12-year-old friend Verline Jules as the girls played in the community's pool on Friday afternoon.

He ran to save the girls when they began struggling in the water. Another child ran for help as the girls sank, and an adult called 911.

An Orange County deputy responding to the call pulled the girls from the deep end of the pool. A neighbor pulled Casseus from the shallow end.

Casseus and Verline were pronounced dead at an Ocoee hospital. Ruth died at an Orlando hospital.

Casseus' father says none of the three could swim.

Sebring

Trespasser dies at raceway track

An autopsy is pending for a trespasser at the Sebring International Raceway who died when his pickup truck crashed into a closed portion of the track.

According to Florida Highway Patrol, 63-year-old Douglas Martin of Bonita Springs was traveling at a high rate of speed and skidded into a tire barrier wall after failing to make a right turn. The truck caught fire.

Raceway safety steward Robert Hayward says a track worker tried to get Martin out of the truck but was unable to move him.

FHP troopers say Martin was wearing a seat belt.

Hayward says Martin was trespassing and circumvented locked gates Friday night, and "he was in some way impaired."

west palm beach

'Welcome Back, Kotter' actor teaches

Arnold Dingfelder Horshack is back in the classroom.

Ron Palillo, the actor who played the wisecracking Horshack in the 1970s sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter, is now the teacher.

The Palm Beach Gardens resident teaches acting to freshmen and sophomores at G-Star School of the Arts for Motion Pictures and Broadcasting, an 860-student charter high school in Palm Beach County.

Palillo started working at the school this fall after making a movie at the campus studio over the summer. He will also teach an acting class for adults in January. He says his students now are a lot more motivated than the students he and John Travolta played on the TV show.

Palillo says, "You don't see any Sweathogs in my class."

Associated Press