By CANDACE J. SAMOLINSKI of The Tampa Tribune Whether they came face-to-face with Hank Earl Carr or saw the carnage caused by his deadly rampage one year ago, law enforcement officers in Pasco and Hernando counties say it changed their lives. Four of them who encountered Carr or faced the aftermath of his killing spree spoke recently about what happened that day and how it affected them. Here are their stories:

The site where Trooper James B. Crooks was gunned down by Hank Earl Carr is memorialized this week by flowers, personal notes and other remembrances. The fatal shooting occurred a year ago today at the northbound exit ramp of I-75 at State Road 54. Some of the law enforcement officers on the scene or who faced the aftermath of the rampage tell how their lives -- and work -- have been affected.

Hink Dade City On a normal day, Pasco sheriff's Cpl. David Hink, now 32, would have been driving his patrol car, investigating burglaries. He wouldn't have been anywhere near the intersection of Pasco Road and State Road 54. But luckily for Christopher Espinosa of Brooksville, Hink's carr had broken down just hours before Hank Earl Carr began heading north on Interstate 75. See HINK.

Nugent Brooksville In his 27 years of law enforcement Hernando County's sheriff's Major Richard Nugent has never seen anything like the bloodbath initiated by Hank Earl Carr. Nugent was the SWAT team commander in charge of the standoff that began outside a Shell gasoline station at Interstate 75 and State Road 50, where Carr holed up after his three-county run from police. See NUGENT.

Hensley Gowers Corner Florida Highway Patrol Cpl. M.D. Hensley was driving home from an off-duty job at about 6 a.m. on May 19, 1998 when he dear about a traffic fatality that had closed Interstate 75. He decided to stop by the highway patrol's Pasco County office on State Road 52. "Brad [Crooks] had come in early that day to work the fatality and I saw him in the office," Hensley said. "About 11 a.m. we headed over to Dixie Boy truck stop to get some breakfast". See HENSLEY.

Campbell Land O' Lakes Pasco sheriff's Cpl. Jim Campbell didn't know it at the time, but Hank Earl Carr's rampage would lead to a career change. Campbell, who was a patrol deputy, is now part of the sheriff's agriculture unit. One year ago he was working near Interstate 75 and State Road 54 when he hear Carr was headed his way. He thought he had 22 minutes to prepare. See CAMPBELL

Hink - Dade City Hink heard a dispatcher issue the warning about Carr, who already had killed his girlfriend's 4-year-old son and two Tampa homicide detectives. Hink grabbed the nearest vehicle - a Dodge four-wheel drive - and headed toward the interstate. ``I was at the light at Pasco Road when I saw Carr go across 54 and back up on the interstate. I tried to head that way,'' he said. ``But the truck wouldn't go that fast, it had a [speed regulator] on it. So, basically I just watched him pull away from me.'' Hink, frustrated with his vehicle, said he ``could've made a sailor blush'' with his remarks as he continued up the interstate. A few miles away, Hink began seeing the carnage Carr had left behind. Cars with shattered windows littered the roadside. Florida Highway Patrol troopers were assisting the drivers. Near exit 60 and Church Overpass Road, Hink spotted a man waving him toward a truck. Glass covered the ground. Hink said Carr had been shooting at tractor-trailers trying to tie up traffic to slow down police. Espinosa, 57, had been caught in the cross-fire. ``He was yelling about the driver being shot,'' Hink said of the man who stopped him. ``The driver [Espinosa] had a bullet hole in his arm; the bullet had gone into his chest.'' Hink and a trooper, who also had stopped, began examining Espinosa. Hink started first- aid using a kit from the trooper's car. ``I tried to keep him talking, keep him from going into shock,'' he said about Espinosa. ``I called for an ambulance and let dispatch know where we were. There was a lot of blood, probably an inch of blood pooled in the truck.'' Hink noticed the trooper who was helping Espinosa also needed assistance. ``The glass had been busted out of the trooper's car. When I asked him what happened he said he didn't know,'' Hink said. ``Then we found a bullet in his car and he really started wigging out. He had just seen the other trooper who had been killed.'' It was a tense situation. As seconds passed, Hink waited for paramedics to arrive. ``I remember looking up, counting all of the police cruisers that went by,'' he said. ``I don't know why I did that, it just was something to do that kept me calm.'' After Espinosa was put into an ambulance - he survived - Hink headed to the command post and then went home. Looking back, Hink said he believes Espinosa had fate on his side. ``I think God does certain things for certain reasons,'' he said. ``That's why my car broke down that day.'' Last month, Pasco Sheriff Lee Cannon gave Hink, an 11-year veteran of the department, the Life Saving Award. Hink, who comes from four generations of police chiefs and officers, said he doesn't feel like a hero. He's not sure Espinosa knows his name, but he considers that an insignificant detail. ``That's what I get paid for, I guess,'' he said, adding, ``but it was something I'll never forget. I live near the area where it all ended with Carr. I pass by it every day. I never stop thinking about it.''

Nugent - Brooksville ``It was a career-changing event that you never want to go through again,'' he said. ``It made us re-examine our training capabilities and how we handle prisoners. It reminded you to never become complacent.'' Earlier that day Carr was being questioned by Tampa police after his girlfriend's son was shot. On the way to the police station, he used a key to free himself from handcuffs fastened in front of his body. He grabbed a gun and killed Tampa detectives Ricky Childers and Randy Bell. Seconds later, he stole a truck that he used to lead police on the chase. Along the way he killed Trooper James B. Crooks. Nugent now uses what happened that day to demonstrate the right and wrong ways to handle potentially violent suspects. The FBI has asked him to teach at Central Florida Community College and in Atlanta. In June, he will teach at the Florida Hostage Negotiators Association meeting in Orlando. ``One of the messages I give out is don't get complacent just because you're in a rural area or a suburban area,'' he said. ``It can happen anywhere, and all of these counties are changing rapidly because of growth.'' Once investigators realized Carr had taken the Shell station's clerk, Stephanie Kramer, as a hostage, Nugent said their main goal was getting her out alive and not allowing anyone else to get injured. But they didn't plan on members of the media interfering with their negotiations with Carr. ``We had never had somebody from the outside call and start talking to a hostage taker,'' Nugent said, referring to calls made by a radio station news director and a newspaper reporter. ``We have had to gain control of the telephone lines before but, in hindsight, we probably would have done something more drastic if we had known that could happen.'' The radio conversation allowed investigators to find out Carr's real name and run a background check that showed he was a violent felon, Nugent said. ``That was information that if we'd gotten much earlier could've saved some lives,'' he said. But the conversation also tied up telephone lines and prevented hostage negotiations, Nugent said. Under normal circumstances, Nugent said they could have hard-wired a telephone and thrown it through the window to communicate with Carr. ``But in this case, we'd already seen what he was capable of when he killed those two Tampa homicide detectives, the trooper and that little boy,'' he said. ``There were windows all around the gas station, but getting close enough to get a telephone inside would've meant possibly putting one of our guys in a deadly situation.'' Television news stations were broadcasting live video of the standoff, Nugent said. There was concern Carr might be watching television and seeing how police officers were positioned. Once Kramer was freed, Nugent decided to have the Tampa police bomb squad use explosives to put two holes in the building. ``When we got inside, we found Carr dead,'' Nugent said, adding it wasn't what they had hoped to find. ``We would have preferred to keep everyone alive.'' The death of the three officers is a constant reminder of what can go wrong, Nugent said. ``Every time a cop dies, a piece of you dies,'' he said. ``It's an issue that never goes away. We talk about what things we can do differently daily. We're always in a training mode.''

Hensley - Gowers Corner Trooper James B. Crooks, called Brad by his friends, was nervous because he had missed a court date while dealing with the accident, Hensley said. ``We took advantage of the chance to give him a hard time about it,'' he said. ``We said the judge was going to find him in contempt of court, and he was getting pretty excited about it.'' After razzing Crooks for awhile, Hensley decided to head home. He normally would have seen his wife that morning, but by the time he made it home she had left for work. ``It was about 3:15 when my wife woke me up and said a trooper had been killed up on the interstate,'' Hensley said. ``She normally got off work and came home about 3:45, but that day she rushed home because she thought it was me who had been killed and couldn't reach me on the telephone.'' Because Crooks had started the day early, Hensley never suspected he might be the victim. But when he called the dispatcher to find out details, she told him about his friend. ``It was busy that afternoon and there were lots of wrecks so he had stayed for those,'' Hensley said the dispatcher told him. ``I asked her if anyone was out with him. She wasn't sure, so I got dressed and went to him.'' Hensley, 35, said it was his Marine Corps training that prompted him to want to do whatever he could to make sure his friend's body was cared for properly. ``I knew the transport guy from the medical examiner's office from working traffic fatalities with him,'' he said. ``When he saw me, he was glad it wasn't me. But he had seen Crooks that morning at the other traffic accident.'' Hensley convinced the man from the medical examiner's office to allow him to stay behind to help with Crooks. ``But when he came back from the car, he had this awful look on his face,'' Hensley said. ``It was like fear or something, a look I had never seen from him before. He told me I shouldn't go up there, so I stayed where I was.'' The next time he saw Crooks was at the funeral. The trooper's death hit everyone hard, Hensley said. The toughest part was knowing how hard Crooks worked to become a trooper. ``He had an intestinal fortitude like I had never seen,'' Hensley said. ``I mean he had been working at IBM before going into the academy, and he could've made a lot more money doing that. ``But he wanted to be a trooper,'' he said. ``He was the only one out of his class to start the academy, stop to go back and get his college degree, and then start back up and finish everything.'' Crooks was one of the most personable people he has known, Hensley said. ``I think he realized you could get killed on this job, but I don't think it ever crossed his mind that it actually could happen to him,'' Hensley said. Hensley said he and other troopers have learned from Crooks' death. ``About two weeks after that whole thing happened, there was a BOLO [be on the lookout] that came out about a man driving down the interstate shooting at cars,'' he said. ``The first thing we did was to get a shotgun out of the trunk and put it in the front seat with a round in it.'' Hensley, who has been a trooper since 1986, said he has gotten used to people not liking him simply because he's a law enforcement officer. That's why he was so impressed with what two people did the day Crooks was killed. ``What really surprised me that day was how much people came to help. There was one guy who came off the interstate and tried to stop Carr from shooting Brad. And the other guy, a young guy, tried to help Brad. He jumped inside the car and put it in park. And you wouldn't have expected that of a young person today. It's good to have a surprise like that, to really see that there is somebody out there who does care for us.''

Campbell - Land 0' Lakes ``I was so intent on thinking about what I was going to do that I didn't notice what was going on around me,'' he said. ``Had I looked to my left, I probably would've seen Carr running back to his vehicle with the rifle in his hands because he had just shot the trooper and I didn't realize it.'' When Campbell did realize it was Carr, he began chasing him on the interstate. ``He was running people off the road. I remember seeing a delivery truck shake real violently and the driver pull off the road,'' Campbell said, referring to the truck driven by Christopher Espinosa. ``I didn't realize he had shot that driver.'' As the chase reached Overpass Road, Campbell said he saw something unprecedented. ``It was almost like everybody on the road was listening to radio stations and knew I was chasing this guy,'' he said. ``They just parted the ways and it was just he and I.'' Carr began firing. The dispatchers had warned Carr had a pistol, but Campbell didn't realize Carr had a stolen a rifle after shooting two Tampa homicide detectives. ``He slid the rear sliding window open on the truck and actually jeered at me,'' Campbell said of Carr. ``I was about 120 yards behind him, doing 120 mph. The second time he came into the rear window, he lifted the rifle and fired.'' The bullet came through the windshield, passed Campbell's head and shattered the back window of his patrol car. Carr fired again. The second shot came through the windshield just as Campbell ducked behind the dashboard. But the third shot came too quickly. ``I could see the muzzle blast of the SKS. It came out in four different directions. I hesitated before ducking down,'' Campbell said. ``But that round went too high and hit my rearview mirror, it showered me with glass fragments and a bullet fragment hit my neck.'' Campbell has a three-inch scar, but said he feels lucky to be alive. He didn't realize he was seriously hurt. Soon, a flood of police vehicles joined the chase. Campbell saw troopers pass him and realized they weren't aware Carr had a rifle. ``I knew they didn't understand the danger since they hadn't seen him firing at me,'' he said. ``I would intentionally speed my car up to weave in front of them so they could see my car blown apart.'' The chase continued with Campbell three vehicles behind Carr. When they reached the exit to State Road 50, Carr pulled into the Shell station. Campbell fired four rounds at the truck. But Carr already had jumped out and run inside. ``I got out of my car and stayed at the scene for 45 minutes before I collapsed from a loss of blood,'' Campbell said. ``They put me in an ambulance and took me to East Pasco Medical Center where they removed part of the bullet fragment. When I was laying in the emergency room, they had a television on. ``My wife was there, and we were watching it on the monitor,'' he said. ``When they threw the explosive charge we knew it was over.'' But it wasn't over for Campbell's new wife, Zaida. She wanted him to stop patrolling the roads. ``I kept telling her everything would be all right, but she wanted me to ask for a change,'' he said. ``I told Sheriff [Lee] Cannon what I was asking for was for her, not me.'' Campbell was assigned to the off-duty coordinator's position at the sheriff's Land O' Lakes substation. He stayed there about six months. ``But being tied to a desk isn't my cup of tea,'' he said. ``When the position in the agricultural environmental unit came open, I was asked if I would take it and I jumped at it. I've worked with horses and cows my entire life.'' Last month Cannon gave Campbell, a 25-year veteran of the department, the Medal of Valor. ``It was a tragic day in Tampa Bay and I don't think anyone will ever forget it,'' he said. ``And if they do, shame on them.''