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Timeline of Events
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Joey Bennett Hank Earl Carr
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9:50 a.m., Tuesday. Joey Bennett, 4, is brought to a Tampa fire station by Hank Earl Carr and the boy's mother, Bernice Bowen. The boy had a bullet in his head. Bowen pleads with firefighters to save her son. They try, but Joey dies.
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| Next several minutes. Carr speeds away from the station, returning to the apartment where Joey was shot. When police catch up to him, Carr tells them the shooting was an accident. Police treat it that way.
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10:30 a.m. Carr bolts from the police, raising suspicions. He is quickly caught and taken to the Tampa Police Department, where he is questioned. Police detectives Rick Childers and Randy Bell return to the apartment with Carr. They walk through the scene.
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Tampa Police detectives Randy Bell, left, and Rick
Childers, holding the assault rifle, escort a handcuffed
Hank Earl Carr, a suspect in the shooting of a 4-year-old
boy.
JAY NOLAN/Tampa Tribune photo.
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Rick ChildersRandy Bell
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2 p.m. While returning to the police station, Carr gets out of his handcuffs and grabs Childers' gun. He shoots Childers, who is driving. He turns the gun on Bell and shoots him as the officer tries to dive into the back seat. Carr gets out of the car and carjacks a white Ford Ranger. He heads north on Interstate 275 into Pasco County.
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2:30 p.m. Just south of State Road 54 Florida Highway Patrol trooper James B. Crooks stops with the Ford Ranger. Carr gets out of the truck with a rifle. He shoots Crooks while the rookie officer is talking to his lieutenant on the police radio. As Carr moves back to the stolen truck, a witness sees another truck try to run him down, but Carr speeds off.
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James B. Crooks
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Officers, media and spectators surround a gas station near I-75.
DAVID KADLUBOWSKI/Tampa Tribune Photo
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3 p.m. Carr crosses the Hernando County line where officers are waiting. He runs over a device that punctures his tires. He fires his rifle wildly, hitting a sheriff's helicopter. He pulls off the interstate at State Road 50 and drives to a Shell gasoline station. He shoots at police as he runs into the building where he takes a hostage, Stephanie Diane Kramer.
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Next four hours. Carr stays in the gas station. No shots are fired, but he has plenty to say. Radio reporters talk to him, and the conversation is broadcast on television. He tells his story. He talks to Bowen.
7:30 p.m. Carr lets Kramer go. She runs from the building to the safety of the police. Hernando sheriff's officers fire five canisters of tear gas into the building. The Tampa bomb squad sets off charges designed to blow holes in the walls. When the gas clears, Carr is dead. He has shot himself in the head.
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Memorials
The memorial service for Florida
Highway Patrol Trooper James "Brad" Crooks
stretched from the breadth of a community to the heart
of his fiancee.
Detectives Randy Bell and Rick
Childers - partners in life and partners in death -
are laid to rest as the city grieves.
Tampa bid a sorrowful farewell to two fallen officers
Saturday, its collective heart breaking at the loss of
men whose lives were a tribute to goodness and
justice.
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