Shooting suspect faces hate crime charge

LUTZ -- What Jeffrey Haskell heard was: "This is what I do to white boys."

What he felt was a 9mm bullet tearing through his right shoulder socket and out his lower back, said his father, Dave Haskell.

Then Haskell, 18, heard: "My God, I just shot you."

The Hillsborough Sheriff's Office says Haskell was dragged down 147th Avenue in Lutz and left on the side of 30th Street.

Detectives are looking for Donald I. "Florida" Horton, 23, in the shooting, which happened an hour after midnight Wednesday. They plan to charge him with attempted murder, as a hate crime.

Horton is African-American; Haskell is white.

Dave Haskell said his son is expected to survive, but suffered a damaged lung, kidney and shoulder. He cannot use his right arm, Haskell said.

"He's got stitches from his chest all the way down to his stomach," Haskell said.

The younger Haskell and Horton were acquaintances.

"He just knew of him," the father said. "He'd seen him in the neighborhood and knew that the kid was trouble," the father said. "He used to stay away from him when he went over there."

Jeffrey Haskell had visited a girlfriend in Lutz and was walking or bicycling home when he was shot, his father said. Horton has been arrested four times in the last two years in connection with drug possession, domestic violence and obstructing an officer without violence. He was acquitted of the battery charge, and all the other charges apparently were dropped.

Sheriff's spokesman Lt. Rod Reder said a small amount of marijuana was found on the younger Haskell after he was shot. "It's not our primary focus now," he said.

Dave Haskell said his son "is no angel, but nobody deserved this." He said it is right to designate the shooting a hate crime.

"If it was a white man doing it to a black man, he'd be prosecuted under the hate crimes law for sure," he said. "What's good for the goose is good for the gander."

-- Bill Coats can be reached at 269-5309 or coats@sptimes.com .

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