Man Slips Out of Handcuffs, Kills Officers in Rampage

A man being driven to police headquarters for questioning about the death of his 4-year-old stepson wriggled out of his handcuffs and shot and killed two veteran police detectives Tuesday before gunning down a state trooper as he fled the city of Tampa in a stolen car.

The rampage finally ended in a gas station along a major Florida interstate highway when the suspect, surrounded by an estimated 170 police officers, released a hostage and then killed himself with a gunshot to the head.

Police fired tear gas into the Shell gas station near the town of Brooksville, 50 miles north of Tampa, and set off an explosive device before rushing the building to find the suspect’s body.

He was identified as Hank Carr, 30, a man with a long police record dating back to 1986.

What turned out to be one of the deadliest days in the history of Florida law enforcement began early Tuesday, Tampa police reported, when Carr and his wife told detectives that their son, identified as Joseph Bennett, was dragging a rifle behind him when they yelled at him to stop. The gun went off, the couple said, and the boy was shot in the head.

In a radio interview broadcast by WFLA as the suspect was holed up in the gas station with a female clerk as hostage, Carr said he agreed to accompany police to his home to explain how his son died. But they seemed to doubt his story, he said.

“They took me back to the scene, which was bad enough. My son’s blood was all over the walls,” Carr said.

Tampa television crews recorded police chasing Carr across the lawn of his home and wrestling him to the ground. With long dark hair, and dressed in cut-off blue jeans and a white T-shirt, Carr is shown being placed in the back seat of the detectives’ dark Ford Taurus, his hands cuffed in front.

On the ride back to police headquarters, Carr told the radio station, “They started calling me a liar,” he said. “I asked them, you know, was I going to prison? They said yes.

“I got one of the handcuffs off. I reached up front and got the pistol away from the officer that was driving. The other one jumped in the back seat trying to get it [the gun] away.

“I shot them both,” he said.

The slain officers were identified as Randy Bell, 44, and Rick Childers, 46.

Carr told the radio station that after shooting the detectives he jumped out of the police car, took his rifle from the trunk and carjacked a white truck that was behind the police car. He fled north on Interstate 75.

A few minutes later, Florida Highway Patrol Officer James Crooks apparently tried to stop Carr. They exchanged gunfire, and Crooks, 23, was killed.

Carr then crashed into the car of another state trooper and shot at a truck driver who suffered minor injuries.

Several miles further north, after police shot out the tires of the truck, Carr ran into a Shell station.

In the radio interview he claimed that he had been wounded by one of several rounds fired by police who tried to stop him as he raced northward in the stolen truck. “They [police] were shooting at me every underpass I went under,” he said.

“They blowed my tires out, 90 miles an hour, I almost wrecked twice. They shot me . . . . I’m bleeding bad.

“And here I am. That’s my story.”

The standoff with police at the gas station lasted about four hours. At one point the radio reporter interviewing Carr told him, “This situation should end peacefully, Hank. Please. Please.”

Carr promised not to harm his hostage, Stephanie Hill, 27. “I’ll probably give her the guns and let her go out, and I’ll just lay on the floor here and they can come and get me,” he said. “But right now, I want to talk to my wife before I do anything.”

Hill was released unharmed about 7:30 p.m. Minutes later, police fired tear gas through the gas station windows and rushed inside to find Carr dead.

Police said Carr had an arrest record for burglary, grand larceny, possession of cocaine and resisting an officer with violence.

Of the rifle with which his son was killed, Carr said, “That gun was supposed to be empty. I don’t understand what happened.”

But Tampa police spokesman Steve Cole, speaking at a news conference, said that Carr had changed his story during questioning. “He said he had gotten the gun away from the child and it accidentally went off. He shot the child.”

Police confiscated three rifles from Carr’s home.