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Man Gunned Down Outside Royal Park Apartments

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By HOWARD ALTMAN | The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 29, 2008

Updated: 11/29/2008 10:07 pm

TAMPA - Christopher Ryan James, who everyone called "C.J," was crazy about his 2-month-old son, Christopher James Jr.

"He was always talking about his son," Jerrick Bynum says. "We would hang out, go to clubs, do stuff, but he would always talk about his son."

That son will never know his father.

James, 22, was gunned down last night about a hundred yards from the apartment he shared with his girlfriend, Ashia Williams, and their son at 5701 Society Park Drive, Apt. E.

Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office deputies responding to 911 calls about gunshots in the area of the Royal Park Apartments at Sligh and 56th streets found James on the ground, next to his car, outside 6920 Castlegate Drive.

"We called the boy 'Little C. J.,' because he looked just like his daddy," Iman Postell says.

Sometime after 10 p.m. last night, she says she heard a gunshot. Then a neighbor knocked on the door.

"She told me C.J. was shot," says Postell, who ran out of her apartment and across the street, where James was dying.

"He was still breathing," she says. "He was coughing up blood. We were talking to him, but he wasn't saying anything."

She says James' pants were below his knees, "like someone pulled them off," she says, and his pockets were pulled out.

"He was a good person," says Postell, who knew James for about a year. "I just saw him Thanksgiving Day."

She describes James as a "good friend, who would help people out, help people if they were hungry. He shared with us."

No one milling about the apartment complex this evening, where kids were play football in the street, said they know who would have wanted James dead.

"I don't understand," says Alicia Martin, who watched Little C.J. while his mother went go see his dying father.

Deputies say they have no suspect descriptions.

This is the second homicide this month at the apartment complex.

Darrell A. Vance, 29, was found about 12:45 a.m. Nov. 12 in a grassy area between buildings at the Royal Park apartments.

John Harrold, whose apartment looks over the spot where James died, says the apartment complex has a big crime problem.

"Time for me to go," he says.

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