Sun lover battles the goons



Beach Bob likes to sunbathe in a Speedo. Nearly every cloudless morning for more than 10 years, he’s wheeled his tattered lounger down to the same spot, which he says is due west of where the boardwalk opens onto the sand at Bonita Beach, and sets up camp for the day.

And so his retirement was going. Sun-drenched, uneventful. Until one day a Lee County Sheriff’s deputy stopped by and wrote him a warning for trespassing. The reason? “Exposed scrotum,” the notice read. “Never return to Bonita Beach Main Access.”

But it turns out that, belied by his self-proclaimed “super-lazy” lifestyle, Beach Bob (more properly known as Robert Hezzelwood, 61, retired court reporter and Bonita Springs resident of 16 years) is a heckuva fighter. Not the sort to let even a warning of a misdemeanor charge go unchallenged. Not when it comes to his blue Speedo. Not when he says he was falsely accused.

Eventually, he got the trespass warning thrown out. It wasn’t easy. He hired a lawyer, studied maps of the Collier-Lee county line, trotted some of the other beach regulars up to Fort Myers to testify on his behalf. They reported the patch of sand he claims every day is in fact south of the Lee border, so Deputy William Dunaske had no business patrolling there anyway. They said Hezzelwood never rolls in the sides of his Speedo like the deputy alleged.

Then, even winning in court wasn’t enough. Eighteen months after he received the trespass warning, and about a year after a judge threw it out, Hezzelwood now says he’s planning to sue the Lee County Sheriff’s Office. He claims his civil rights were violated. “This whole thing could have been just nipped right in the bud early on,” Hezzelwood said, if Sheriff Mike Scott had responded to him by saying, “‘Yeah, our guy blew it, we apologize.’”

Scott says his office looked into Hezzelwood’s allegations that Dunaske had lied about the exposed scrotum and found in favor of the deputy, declining to launch an investigation. That didn’t satisfy Hezzelwood. “My concern is, if that can happen to me, “ he said, “and the sheriff stonewalls me, I don’t think I’m that unique. And anybody is at risk.”

This story begins in 2005. Hezzelwood, who says he has suffered insomnia because of the stress, meticulously catalogues the relevant dates and records of his correspondence in the case. According to Beach Bob, his first run-in with Dunaske was on July 25 — the deputy approached his lounger and told him to unroll the Speedo. “I have occasionally rolled the top of the Speedo so that the (straps) are a little narrow,” Hezzelwood explained. But he insists there’s nothing X-rated about it: “I’m an old, retired fart who likes sitting on the beach. I was a little embarrassed.”

He says he challenged the deputy, believing they were positioned south of the Lee border and out of his jurisdiction. Soon after, Hezzelwood says, he marched off to the Sheriff’s Office to complain to a supervisor.

To David Mourick, the attorney who represented Hezzelwood in his fight over the warning, what happened next was a matter of prurience. “It was just a Barney Fife that thought it just wasn’t proper, (Hezzelwood) wearing that bathing suit.” For his part, Hezzelwood says it was retaliation.

More than a year later, on October 31, 2006, Dunaske approached Hezzelwood again on the beach. Out came the trespass notice. “The first couple (verbal) warnings didn’t obviously make an impression on him,” Dunaske, who says he’d in fact told Hezzelwood multiple times before not to expose his genitals, said in an interview. “He didn’t attempt to cover up or anything. He said he just wanted to get the most sun he could get.”

Legally, Mourick says, a trespass has to be based on somebody’s complaint. Dunaske said several people complained to him about Hezzelwood’s bathing suit — he told the attorneys in his deposition that the suit was rolled in so much that part of Hezzelwood’s penis poked out. When Maurick pressed him to say who precisely complained, he said they were vacationers who didn’t want to identify themselves.

In Hezzelwood’s eyes, these are all manifestations of Dunaske’s lies. But the deputy says so many people were bothered by the skimpy suit that he was once cheered by beach-goers for telling Hezzelwood to cover himself. As for the county line, Dunaske points out that as a contract deputy for the city of Bonita Springs, he knew precisely where he was when he wrote the warning. “I have no doubt I was in Lee County, and Mr. Hezzelwood was in Lee County. But I respect the judge’s” decision, he said.

It was, indeed, the jurisdictional issue that the judge cited in tossing out the warning. Not only did Hezzelwood’s beach friends place him south of the county line, but Hezzelwood claims a deputy-trainee who was with Dunaske that day later said the same. “I think that’s what the judge chose to go with because it was easiest,” Mourick said.

He wondered why Dunaske didn’t simply arrest Hezzelwood on an indecent exposure charge, if that was the offense underlying the trespass. “It’d be like trespassing someone from a public highway because they’re driving drunk. You arrest them for driving drunk.” In his deposition, Dunaske said his supervisors told him to pursue the trespass route in such cases. Now, he’s a detective assigned to the Central District. In his more than 10 years in law enforcement, he said Hezzelwood’s case doesn’t particularly stand out. “It wasn’t the crime of the century,” he said. “I was doing my job and saw an infraction that I thought bothered the people who were legitimately enjoying the beach.”

But Hezzelwood says the incident mattered a great deal to him. “It frightens me and embarrasses me to go public with it. But by the same token, I don’t know what else to do,” he said. “I’m a civilian out here who’s been picked on by a little bully deputy and that’s wrong. It’s just wrong.” “It was a good case in that it showed these deputies can’t just go in there and trespass people just because they don’t like what they’re wearing,” Mourick said. He asked the reporter if she’d ever seen Hezzelwood in his Speedo. “I don’t find it attractive,” Mourick said, “but I think if he wants to look ridiculous he can go ahead and do it.”

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