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St. Pete Police Kill Teen After Shots Fired At Gun At Graduation Party

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By NEIL JOHNSON | The Tampa Tribune

Published: June 8, 2008

ST. PETERSBURG - When shots cut through the muggy night, Jennifer Bowen and her family dropped to the floor. More shots followed, then a single loud report that sounded like it was in her living room.

Bowen looked out a window and saw 17-year-old Javon Maurice Dawson, wearing shorts and a black tank top, face down in her front yard. Police officers stood nearby.

"I was hysterical. I lost it," Bowen said. "I tried to call 911 and couldn't talk. My mom had to take the phone.

"I was screaming and crying. I thought, 'Oh my God, this is somebody's child.' "

St. Petersburg police said Dawson was shot and killed by Officer Terrence Nemeth, who saw the teenager shooting a handgun. Nemeth told the teen several times to drop the weapon, police said, and fired when the teen did not comply.

Dawson ran a few feet after being shot, and collapsed. Police said they found his revolver nearby.
A student at Gibbs High School, Dawson was one of hundreds of teens at a graduation party Saturday night at the tiny Shining Light Masonic Lodge on Freemont Terrace South.

Police were called about 10:45 p.m. to answer reports of a loud party. They were moving through the street trying to clear the crowd when they heard shots.

The number of students at the gathering outgrew the small building and sprawled out for blocks around into a neighborhood where gunfire was a stranger.

Canesha Newsome, who was at the party, said the group was mostly teenage boys and a few girls. The crowd quickly spilled outside where there was at least one fight. It was way too crowded, she said.

At first the party wasn't overly disruptive, Bowen said. She was reading while her 12-year-old son and 11-year-old nephew played a video game shortly before 11 p.m. Then she heard the shots.

"They were pow, pow, pow. Then pow, pow, pow. Then there was a loud shot. I thought that last shot was in my living room," she said.

The first series of shots came from the alley behind her house. The second series seemed to come from somewhere on the street in front of her house.

Gunshots are rare in the neighborhood of Palmetto Park with small, well-kept, tidy yards and houses, Bowen said.

"They brought this into our neighborhood. We didn't ask for this. It's hard to get over," she said.
Dawson lived at 1808 20th Ave. N. in the Woodlawn Park Apartment Homes, a block east of Interstate 275 and a few miles from where he died. It's a complex of small tan and brown quadraplexes.

Catrell Bacon, a neighbor who also knew him from school called Dawson a class clown, a boy more interested in flirting than fighting.

"I don't think he deserved to die. I never seen him fight. Never seen him get mad," she said. "All you saw was him trying to flirt with girls."

The shooting is under investigation by the police department and the Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney's Office.

Reporter Neil Johnson can be reached at (813) 259-7731 or njohnson@tampatrib.com.

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