News

Related Story: Town fires police lieutenant over Lucibella incident

By Steve Plunkett
    
    Richard Lucibella, Ocean Ridge vice mayor, resigned from office Dec. 7, the same day he was charged with a second felony connected to an Oct. 22 gathering in his back yard.
    “Due to impending litigation between the town of Ocean Ridge and myself, it would be impossible for me to effectively discharge the duties of my office,” Lucibella wrote Mayor Geoff Pugh. “I believe it is in the best interests of our town that I step down.”
    Circuit Judge Charles Burton scheduled a hearing for 8:30 a.m. Jan. 10 at the courthouse in West Palm Beach.
    Lucibella faces one count of battery on a law enforcement officer in addition to resisting an officer with violence. Both are felonies punishable by up to five years in prison. Town police also charged him with misdemeanor use of a firearm while under the influence of alcohol.
    Assistant State Attorney Danielle Grundt added the felony battery charge but decided not to take action on a misdemeanor count of discharging a firearm in public. Her filing canceled a court hearing set for Dec. 8.
    Lucibella has pleaded not guilty to all charges. His attorney, Marc Shiner, said through his assistant that he would have no further comment on the case.
    Police arrived at Lucibella’s oceanfront home that Saturday night after neighbors complained of hearing gunshots. Officers said they found the vice mayor and one of their supervisors, Lt. Steven Wohlfiel, “obviously intoxicated” on the patio. Officers say they took a .40-caliber Glock handgun from Lucibella and found five spent shell casings on the patio. Police also confiscated a semiautomatic pistol they said Lucibella had in his back pocket.
    According to police reports, when officers Richard Ermeri and Nubia Plesnik tried to block Lucibella, 63, from entering the house, he resisted. The officers wrestled him to the ground and handcuffed him. Lucibella needed treatment for facial injuries, and Ermeri and Plesnik also required medical attention, according to the reports.
    Lucibella was absent from the two Town Commission meetings after the incident, on Nov. 7 and Dec. 5. Pugh said the commission would discuss the vice mayor position and the vacant seat at its Jan. 9 meeting.
    Filling the seat temporarily seems “illogical,” Pugh said, because commissioners would have to decide to do that in January, then review names and select someone in February who would then be a voting member only for the March meeting. Lucibella’s three-year term was to expire in March.
    Through Shiner, Lucibella has claimed that he is the victim of police overreaction. He maintains officers should not have entered his backyard in the first place, and then that they used excessive force. Shiner has called for Ermeri’s firing and an investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. The use of excessive force is a defense against a charge of battery on a law enforcement officer.
    Shiner was an assistant state attorney for nearly 13 years before going into private practice in 2000. Grundt began her legal career at the State Attorney’s Office in 2013.
    Police Chief Hal Hutchins reassigned Wohlfiel until completion of an internal investigation of his role in the incident. Both Lucibella and the lieutenant told police they knew nothing about shots being fired.
    Pugh said “some folks got really upset” by Lucibella’s arrest and subsequent resignation.
    “It’s not the first time we’ve had things happen that make the town look silly,” the mayor said. “Does it make the town look bad? I guess, yes.”
    Pugh said the incident also showed that Ocean Ridge “is made up of real people, and people make mistakes.”
    
Dan Moffett contributed to this story.