TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Differing Accounts Emerge Of Shooting In Ybor City

Tribune photo by JULIE BUSCH

A memorial for Roobik "Tony" Vartanian sits near the train tracks on East Sixth Avenue in Ybor City where he was shot and killed by a police officer Saturday morning.

ADVERTISEMENT

By RICH SHOPES | The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 7, 2008

Related Links

• Previous Coverage
• Crime Scene Video

  Roobik Vartanian

YBOR CITY - Roobik "Tony" Vartanian had planned on celebrating his daughter Isabella's third birthday Sunday.

Instead, family and friends gathered around a grassy spot where Vartanian lay bleeding to death a day earlier.

"We were supposed to have a party at our house in Lutz. Instead, we're planning a funeral," family friend Cassie Savinetti said.

Through their grief, Vartanian's family and friends questioned the official police version of events just before an officer shot and killed Vartanian early Saturday morning.

Police say Vartanian, 35, a security manager at the Club Prana nightclub on Seventh Avenue, got into dispute while ejecting two men from the club. He followed them to a parking lot behind a warehouse between Sixth and Seventh avenues.

Police say two plainclothes police officers arrived, identified themselves and asked Vartanian to drop the gun. Instead, they say, he turned toward the officers.

Officer Rick Harrell fired a shot, hitting Vartanian in the stomach. He died at Tampa General Hospital.

"I'm not going to say he was a saint, but for a man to die that way isn't right," said Steve Dugger, a towing operator and friend of Vartanian's.

Dugger was cleaning a parking lot Sunday, when Vartanian's friends and family members showed up to create a makeshift memorial near where he was shot.

They laid pink and red roses there. Vartanian's father, Tony Sr., and stepmother, Annette, sat on the grass next to the flowers. His half-brother, Mike, 23, stood nearby.

Vartanian moved to Tampa from Jacksonville about a year ago. He had just put a deposit down on a condominium at 1611 E. Sixth Ave., not far from where he was shot.

"All he cared about was his daughter," Mike Vartanian said.

Mixed with emotions for their loss was anger toward police.

Dugger said his employees saw the shooting and told him the officers did not identify themselves and did not wait for Vartanian to turn fully toward them before firing.

"These were plainclothes cops. If Tony knew they were cops, he wouldn't have pointed a gun at them," Dugger said.

The shooting happened about 1:20 a.m. Saturday morning.

Police said Vartanian and other employees chased the two men outside after an argument in the club and confronted them behind the warehouse. He asked one of the employees to go back inside to get a gun. Moments later, the two plain-clothes officers showed up in the van.

Police maintain they identified themselves to Vartanian and ordered him to drop the gun, but he refused and turned toward them.

Recia Henry, 23, of Ybor City was working at the parking lot and disputed the officers' account. She said the officers never identified themselves.

"Tony never had a chance," she said.

Other eyewitnesses said the officers did identify themselves, according to police spokeswoman Laura McElroy.

"The officer got out of the vehicle and yelled twice: 'Police. Drop your weapon.' At that point, after he yelled the order twice, the man turned toward the officer with the gun. Several witnesses gave that account," she said.

Family members said they think the men from the club saw where Vartanian lived and were headed in that direction when Vartanian confronted them. He was near his Sixth Avenue condo when the unmarked van pulled up.

Amid the differences in versions are charges Vartanian yelled racial epithets at the two men, who are black.

His brother denied that, saying Vartanian dated a black woman for seven years.

"That's not Tony," he said.

Vartanian will be buried in Jacksonville, where the rest of his family lives.

"He was a wonderful boy," his father said. "He was my best friend."

Reporter Rich Shopes can be reached at (813) 259-7633 or at rshopes@tampatrib.com.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT