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Tow-Truck Driver Gets Call To Help Rescue School's Bull

Photo from Stepps Towing

Deputies say they called Stepps after receiving an anonymous tip that led them to the bull.

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By HOWARD ALTMAN | The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 31, 2008

Updated: 07/31/2008 04:44 pm

TAMPA - When Bill Jones got the call about the bull, he had no idea what he was in for.

"I thought maybe it was something that got hit in the road," Jones says. "All they told me was that it was 500 pounds."

For the past three years, Jones has been driving a tow truck for Stepps Towing. Yesterday afternoon, the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office says it needed Jones' tow truck to cart off a bull found off 59th Street in Tampa.

It wasn't until he drove down a long dirt road to a little house and barn at 1922 N. 59th St. that he learned the bull wasn't road kill but a beloved $8,000 statue that went missing from Bloomingdale High School, home of the Bloomingdale Bulls.

Deputies say they called Stepps after receiving an anonymous tip that led them to the bull, which had been anchored to concrete and stolen between 10 p.m. July 28 and 7 a.m. July 29.

"They didn't tell me it was bronze till I got there," Jones says.

Jones says he wasn't the only one surprised.

"The property owner didn't know anything about it," Jones says. "He didn't even know it was there. I don't know how you miss something like that."

Seeing the statue outside a barn next to a house nestled in a Tampa industrial zone "was amazing."

"This was probably the strangest thing I ever picked up," Jones says.

It was also one of the most challenging.

"It was very heavy," Jones says.

It took him, another driver and seven deputies to move the statue.

"I grabbed the bull by the horns," he says.

It took the nine men about a half-hour to lug the bull to the truck, Jones says, and about another 15 minutes to hoist it aboard.

From there, Jones and his fellow driver, followed by the seven deputies, made the 12-mile journey back to Bloomingdale High in Valrico. Stepps did the job for free. Along the way, other drivers peered out their windows to catch a better glimpse, he says.

Once they arrived, they had to take the bull inside the school.

So the drivers and deputies climbed aboard the tow truck and began the arduous task of carrying the mascot off and into the school.

Once again, Jones says he grabbed the bull by the horns.

So far, the case of the bronze bull is a mystery.

"We have no clue who took it," says Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office spokesman J.D. Callaway. "But it is under investigation, and we hope to break this one."

School officials were elated at the bull's recovery.

"He was on a field trip," quipped Bloomingdale Assistant Principal Mark Ackett.

For now, the bull is being kept away from its pedestal.

"We are very appreciative of all the help we got from the media and the sheriff's office did a great job," Principal Mark West said. "But we are going to keep it inside for now. We are worried about the copycat thing."

Anyone with information about the bull can call the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office at (813) 247-8240 or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-873-8477.

News Channel 8 reporter Peter Bernard contributed to this report. Editor Howard Altman can be reached at (813) 259-7629 or haltman@tampatrib.com

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