Tampa residents on edge after 3 murders in less than 2 weeks
Police believe killings are linked, but they have few leads.
Jonah Engel Bromwich and Christina Caron
The first killing took place on Oct. 9.
Benjamin Mitchell, 22, a college student, was waiting at a bus stop near his house in Seminole Heights, a neighborhood in Tampa, when he was shot around 9 p.m.
Four days later, the body of Monica Hoffa, 32, was found in a vacant lot. She, too, had been shot.
And six days after that, a third resident, Anthony Naiboa, 20, was shot to death at another bus stop, about a block from where Mitchell was shot.
The three killings in less than two weeks — which the authorities believe are linked — have put residents of Seminole Heights on edge.
There was no obvious connection among the three victims, and the police concede they have few leads. They have asked for residents’ help in the investigation.
All three of the victims were walking alone when they were shot. The killings occurred in a quiet neighborhood that is filled with historic homes. Some sidewalks are lined with brick, and the streets are crowned with a canopy of oak trees.
At a community meeting on Monday evening, Tampa’s interim police chief, Brian Dugan, was clear about how little progress had been made in the investigation. He asked that the community be vigilant and report anything suspicious.
“Everybody at this point is a suspect,” Chief Dugan told hundreds of residents gathered at an elementary school. “If you are out there walking alone, you are either a suspect or a potential victim.”
“There’s a very good likelihood that someone in this room knows who’s doing it,” he added.
Chief Dugan said he had purposely avoided the term “serial killer” because it was too specific a phrase to use given how little investigators knew.
“How do we know there’s not two stepbrothers living in a house and they’re doing it together?” he said. “Let’s not let labels and stereotypes box our vision in and we miss what’s right in front of us.”
Tampa was forced to confront a public emergency last month when Hurricane Irma was projected to devastate the city. But the storm lost steam before hitting the area, causing plenty of damage but largely sparing residents.
“Just like Irma, we’re going to get through this,” Tampa’s mayor, Bob Buckhorn, pledged at the community meeting.
Still, brush from the storm lines the streets of Seminole Heights, in some places lying so dense that some residents have been spooked by the idea that someone might be able to hide among the debris.
Tampa’s interim police chief
‘If you are out there walking alone, you are either a suspect or a potential victim.’
“It’s kind of scary,” said Stan Lasater, the departing president of the neighborhood’s civic association. “There are dead branches everywhere. Everyone’s a little nervous about that.”
In a phone interview on Tuesday, Mr. Buckhorn said that a lack of evidence had prevented the police from developing a profile of a possible killer or killers.
“Whoever’s doing this has not left the typical kinds of evidence that you would see in these things,” he said. “It’s almost like grabbing mist.”
He said the city had boarded up abandoned houses to prevent people from entering them. Workers have also replaced streetlights that are not working and trimmed the tree canopy where it creates shadows on the sidewalks.
Marissa Street, 32, has been living for two years in one of Seminole Heights’s more gentrified sections. During that time she has not worried much about her safety.
But now, she said, she is nervous. She has been leaving her porch light on, and when she rides her bike, she does so outside Seminole Heights. The neighborhood seems quieter than usual, she said, with fewer people out and about.
“There’s that sense of nervousness of the unknown,” she said.
Mitchell was killed around 9 p.m. on Oct. 9 near North 15th Street while waiting at a bus stop. Hoffa, apparently, was killed two days later, also shot in the evening, about a half-mile from the first shooting. Her body was not found until Oct. 13. Naiboa, who had gotten off at the wrong bus stop, was shot on Oct. 19 around 8 p.m. on North 15th Street.
The police have released a video of a suspicious person who was wandering the streets on Oct. 9 and have asked residents for help in identifying the person.
The motive behind the shootings is unknown, the police said. None of the victims were robbed. All three died of gunshot wounds, though the police declined to release more specific details on the shootings. Residents are being advised not to walk alone at night, but the police have also asked that they resist the urge to hunker down in their homes.
“All three murders occurred when no one was around,” said Stephen Hegarty, a police spokesman. “That’s less likely if people are out in pairs and groups.”
Bryanna Fox, a former special agent at the FBI who now works as an assistant professor of criminology at the University of South Florida, said in a phone interview on Tuesday that there was “very clear evidence that it’s a serial killer, according to the FBI’s definition,” pointing out that there had been related killings “with a cooling-off period in between.”
There was also a shared modus operandi among the crimes, she said. The killer was “picking victims in a 10-block radius in the same neighborhood, and using a gun to shoot them at the same time of day.”
Residents describe southeast Seminole Heights, where the killings have taken place, as a social community where neighbors visit on one another’s porches and hold ice cream socials and chili cookoffs. The diverse neighborhood, which is home to many young families, has become a destination for dining and trendy vintage shopping.
Cameron Hainline, 24, lives with his roommates less than a mile from where killings happened.
On Monday night, he said, he was hyperalert to “every little sound.”
Timothy J. Belcher, 59, a salon owner who has lived in Seminole Heights for about 13 years, said, “Some of my neighbors are definitely freaked out about it,” especially those with young children who are concerned about going trick-or-treating for Halloween.
Many residents have said that the violence is an aberration in what is normally a peaceful neighborhood. But this is not the first time that the neighborhood has seen an episode of violent crime. In 2003, two men were tortured and murdered in Seminole Heights. One of the suspects, Steven Lorenzo, is being tried on murder charges and could face the death penalty.