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Trucker Slain In Tampa Was A 'Gentle Man, A Good Man'

News Channel 8 photo by ERIC HAUSMANN

Tampa police officers search for evidence in the slaying of a truck driver on 36th Street.

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By VALERIE KALFRIN | The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 22, 2008

Updated: 02/22/2008 03:13 pm

TAMPA -- Police are reviewing surveillance video from businesses around North 36th Street and East Columbus Drive in hopes of finding who fatally shot a Georgia truck driver.

Investigators think Roger Earl Lee was robbed about 4:40 a.m. Friday while waiting to make a delivery. The windows in the truck's cab were down, his wallet was open and its contents were scattered around the cab, Tampa police said.

Lee, 65, of Nicholls, Ga., had kicked off his shoes, possibly to nap, as he waited to deliver 26 pallets of bleach to the Clorox Products Manufacturing warehouse at 3601 E. Columbus Drive, police said.

Lee had arrived shortly after 4:30 a.m., but a security guard told him deliveries are not accepted until 8 a.m., police spokeswoman Andrea Davis said.

Moments after Lee returned to his truck, the guard heard a shot and screams for help, Davis said. Lee ran toward the guard and collapsed, she said.

Police department records show three robberies have been reported in that area within the past 12 months. In one, on March 18, a cab driver wrestled with a passenger at North 31st Street and East Columbus Drive after the passenger pulled out a gun and demanded money, a police report states. The cab driver was not injured.

Roger Lee was married for 40 years and has two adult children, said his son, Chad Lee, 37. He had worked for National Freight for about 10 years and liked to build model airplanes on weekends.

Chad Lee said in a phone interview that he often worried about his father driving long distances.

"I wanted him to quit," he said. "I never thought that he would die this way. … He was a gentle man, a good man. He never hurt nobody."

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