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Pastor is held on drug charges
By CANDACE RONDEAUX, Times Staff Writer
Police said pastor Robert Fred Clark, 44, was in the parking lot of Dunkin' Donuts at 40076 U.S. 19 when he approached another man about 8:30 p.m. Sunday and asked him if he had any crack for sale. After the man called the police from a nearby pay phone, Officer John Angelakopoulos arrived and began questioning Clark, police said. Clark of 10046 Green Ivy Drive in Trinity told the officer he was waiting for his daughter to pick him up. "He was nervous and he was sweating," Angelakopoulos said. "I asked him if he had tried to buy crack and he said, no, he wouldn't do that; he's a pastor." When Angelakopoulos asked if Clark had anything illegal on him, Clark began to back away. Angelakopoulos stopped Clark and, in a search for weapons, found a plastic bag containing two glass pipes, each of which contained a piece of crack cocaine, police said. "It's going to ruin me. It's going to ruin my family," Clark told Angelakopoulos as the officer patted him down. "He said, 'My life is over. I was going to kill myself last week,' " Angelakopoulos said. After his arrest Sunday, Clark told police he had traded the use of his blue 2002 Mercury Sable for the crack and pipes to an unidentified person who promised to return the car near the Blockbuster video store just north of the doughnut shop on U.S. 19. Clark told police he had been struggling with a drug habit for years but had been clean until last year. His troubles, he told Tarpon Springs police, began in February when family and professional pressures led him to begin using drugs again, Angelakopoulos said. Clark became a senior minister at First Christian Church of Trinity in early 2002 after he resigned as senior minister at First Christian Church of Tarpon Springs in November 2001. During Clark's 14-year tenure at the Tarpon Springs church, membership at the Keystone Road location swelled from 300 to nearly 1,700, leading Clark and other church members to search for more space. The church raised $3.5-million for the church expansion and in the summer of 2001 purchased 30 acres in Pasco County along Little Road in Trinity. About five months after the new land purchase was announced, Clark resigned as pastor of the Tarpon Springs church and began as a minister at the 230-member First Christian Church in Trinity. Greg Johnson, pastor of First Christian Church of Tarpon Springs, said he was shocked and saddened by Clark's arrest on Easter Sunday. "When something like this happens, it's a real blow for all of Christianity," Johnson said. "When someone stumbles, there's no reason for us to feel joy." Johnson said he visited Clark several weeks ago after the former Tarpon Springs pastor was hospitalized for diabetes treatment. Johnson said he knew little else about Clark and his tenure at the Tarpon Springs church. Two telephone calls to First Christian Church of Trinity were not returned on Monday. An Atlanta native, Clark graduated from Cincinnati Bible Seminary in 1982, according to a First Christian Church of Trinity Web site, www.firstchristianoftrinity.org. After founding his own ministry in Harrodsburg, Ky., Clark moved his family to Florida, where he was hired as senior minister at First Christian Church of Tarpon Springs in 1987. On Monday afternoon, Clark was held at the Pinellas County Jail in lieu of $6,000 bail. Calls to his home in Trinity were not returned Monday. -- Candace Rondeaux can be reached at (727) 445-4182 or rondeaux@sptimes.com.
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From the Times North Pinellas desks |
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