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Tommytown Slayings Leave Residents Wary

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By GEOFF FOX

The Tampa Tribune

Published: May 20, 2008

DADE CITY - Residents in the Tommytown area are concerned for their safety but reticent to provide information about shootings here that left three people dead this past weekend, a community leader says.

A vigil for the victims will be held at 5:45 p.m. Thursday at Resurrection Park, said Margarita Romo, executive director of Farmer's Self-Help clinic. The event is being held in conjunction with a scheduled prayer march led by the community's Anti-Drug Coalition of Families.

Romo said a member of the coalition is making a large cross in memory of the victims.

"There are people who have seen and heard things, but they're afraid to say anything," she said.

At least two gangs operate in the area and surrounding neighborhoods, and drugs are at the heart of the community's problems, Romo said. The number of Pasco County sheriff's cruisers has increased since the shootings, but more law enforcement visibility would help, she said.

Sheriff's spokesman Doug Tobin said deputies will be stepping up patrols in the area. Detectives don't think the shootings are linked.

Sheriff's reports say Miguel Arellano, 22, of Dade City, was shot fatally about 2:30 a.m. Sunday near 14th and Lock streets after a fight at the nearby La Onda nightclub. A dark sport utility vehicle, possibly a Chevrolet Blazer, pulled into a nearby parking lot on Lock Street. Arellano approached the vehicle and was shot. He died at Pasco Regional Hospital.

Tobin said the initial fight involved a small group of people in their late teens and a group of adults in their 20s and 30s. Deputies are interviewing about 12 witnesses, including a 16-year-old boy whose arm was broken, he said.

Arellano's shooting happened about six blocks from where Santos de la Cruz, 33, and Quirino Velasquez, 46, were found shot to death about 10 p.m. Friday near Meredith and Hutchinson streets. De la Cruz and Velasquez were Mexican citizens.

The prayer marches have been held twice monthly since August, and Romo said as many as 70 people usually participate.

"We walk through the streets praying and singing," she said. "We want the community to know that we have faith and hope that things can be better. The children don't have to hear the shots and screeching tires and violence.

"We'll play Christian music, but we don't tell people they're going to hell."

Romo said the community explored the idea of establishing a crime watch through the sheriff's office a few years ago, but it never happened.

Although that idea may be revisited in the wake of the recent killings, Romo said the anti-drug coalition has established an unofficial network of residents who call 911 "the minute we hear gunshots."

"That's what I do if I hear an argument going on in the middle of the night," said Romo, a Tommytown resident for about 30 years. "We're trying to teach all of our people to do that."

"If families get stronger, hope is on its way. We're about hope here."

One thing Romo, 72, hopes to establish is a teen center at a longtime pool hall on Lock Street. She also said more streetlights are needed.

This week, she plans to send a letter to nearby churches imploring pastors to work together and with her group to improve the community.

"Maybe what we need to do is build crosses and place them everywhere somebody has died," she said. "There have been a lot of killings over the years."

TIPS

Call the sheriff's office at (727) 844-7711 or the Tips line at 1-800-706-2488. Tips can be made anonymously.

Reporter Lisa A. Davis contributed to this report. Reporter Geoff Fox can be reached at (813) 779-4613 or gfox@tampatrib.com.

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