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Passerby, A Hillsborough Commissioner, Breaks Up Fight

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By BAIRD HELGESON | The Tampa Tribune

Published: March 13, 2009

Kevin White

TAMPA - Maybe Hillsborough County Commissioner Kevin White misses his old line of work.

White was driving home on North Boulevard Friday evening when he saw a man beating a woman at around the 3700 block.

The former Tampa police officer flipped his car around and saw the man dragging the bloody woman by her hair across four lanes of traffic.

He called 911.

White confronted the man as he tried to drag the woman into a house.

"What the heck are you doing?" White recalled asking.

The man lunged at him, in an attempt to scare him off.

By that point, more than 15 cars had stopped and drivers were calling 911.

The man refused to stop fighting with the woman, so White restrained the man and blocked him from getting into the house.

White said he expected the man might hit him, and he was prepared to fight back.

Then a thought flashed through his head. Imagine the headline: "Commissioner Beats Up Guy."

But it never came to that. Police arrived about 15 minutes later.

They arrested the suspect, David Rodgers, 40, on charges of domestic violence.

According to police, Rodgers had been arguing with a roommate in their home at 3701 N. Boulevard when his girlfriend, Christina Hill, 26, ran out the door. Rodgers chased after her and started fighting with her, at one point trying to strangle her.

"I couldn't just watch this happen and not take some kind of action," White said. "I wouldn't have been able to live with myself if I'd turned on the evening news and saw that something tragic had happened, and that I didn't do something about it."

Reporter Baird Helgeson can be reached at (813) 259-7668.

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