Dippolito witness at drug death scene

Mohamed Shihadeh almost lost own life in motel room where mother of three succumbed in March.

BOYNTON BEACH — Early one Tuesday in March, a 34-yearold homeless married mother of three lay cold — as still as a mannequin, a witness would later tell police — on the bare chest of a virtual stranger in a borrowed bed inside a $70-a-night motel room.

Linda Lavell was dead by the time Boynton Beach police arrived, but the man below her was still breathing. It wasn’t long before detectives recognized him

Hearing for judge to consider allegations that one of the jurors who convicted her was sleeping through parts of the trial.

Sentencing hearing. as perhaps the most famous informant in the department’s history.

Mohamed Shihadeh, the man who nearly eight years ago had come to police hoping to stop Dalia Dippoplito from killing her husband, nearly died of a drug overdose — a fate that his companion of the evening did not escape.

This wasn’t the first time the star witness in Dippolito’s case had been the subject of a police report. Several recorded incidents have marked the years since he sparked the caught-on-camera investigation that last month led Palm Beach County jurors to convict Dippolito, for the second time in three trials, of solicitation to commit first-degree murder.

Shihadeh had given Dippolito’s defense new life in her second trial, when he claimed police forced him to go through with