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Missing Widow, Alleged Killer Of Husband Found

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: December 9, 2007

Timothy Blackwelder

TAMPA - Georgia authorities have found the missing mother of toddler twins whose husband was shot to death Friday and have arrested the man accused of killing her husband, Tampa police said late Saturday.

Tampa homicide detectives were on their way to Georgia on Saturday night to interview the two.

Tampa police investigators think Brittani Stewart, 22, left her home at 910 W. Sitka St. after Timothy Craig Blackwelder, 24, shot and killed her husband, George Anthony Stewart Jr., on Friday afternoon. The circumstances of her disappearance were not clear. The Stewarts' car, a 2006 silver Dodge Caravan, was also missing.

Brittani Stewart and Blackwelder knew each other, Tampa police said. Court records show that she asked for a domestic violence injunction against Blackwelder in late November.

A warrant was issued for Blackwelder's arrest on first-degree murder and armed burglary charges.

Police responded to the Sitka Street house just after 4 p.m. Friday for a reported domestic disturbance and found George Stewart dead of a gunshot wound when they entered the house, according to investigators. The twin girls were found with him, unharmed.

A tactical team and an armored rescue vehicle were called to the neighborhood as a precaution, police Cpl. Jared Douds said. SWAT members checked the home and surrounding houses for suspects.

Police asked residents to temporarily vacate their homes while the tactical team inspected Sitka Street and nearby North Boulevard, Douds said. He said it did not appear that there was a break-in or that items were taken from the house.

When police were en route to the possible domestic disturbance, a caller from inside the house told dispatchers that the person causing the disturbance was "possibly armed," Douds said.

Michael Urso, 44, who lives just off Sitka Street for 11 years, said his neighborhood is usually quiet.

Students from Adams Middle School were getting off a school bus on North Boulevard when the first police cars and SWAT vehicles arrived, Urso said. The students rushed toward Sitka Street to see what was happening just as police were putting up crime scene tape, he said.

"It was incredible," Urso said. "In seconds, everything was blocked off."

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