The 36-year-old victim was found lying on a woman's doorstep shortly after he left Cooper's Bar.
By STEVE THOMPSON
Published December 7, 2003
DADE CITY - Shortly after 1 a.m. Saturday, Carrie Kennedy heard gunshots outside her home on Island Avenue.
When she went to her front door, she found a man lying on her doorstep, bleeding from his mouth and from the back of his head.
A trail of blood led from a light blue Plymouth minivan, its lights still on, its engine running. A bullet had left a hole in its rear window.
The man was soon identified as 36-year-old Jerome Gerald Rainey. He was taken by helicopter to St. Joseph's Hospital in Tampa and remained in critical condition later Saturday morning, the Sheriff's Office reported.
The first deputy to respond to the scene reported that Rainey appeared to be trying to say something, but was unable to.
"I asked Mr. Rainey who did this to him, but he could not answer," the deputy reported.
Rainey's niece, Harriett Cowart, told deputies that she had been at Cooper's Bar with her uncle and others shortly before the shooting.
She and two friends were going to drop off two others at an address on Main Street and had been expecting Rainey to meet them there.
She told deputies that her uncle had not gotten into any confrontations while at the bar.
Her uncle gets along well with everybody, she said, and was not the kind of person to pick a fight.
Rainey lives with his mother in San Antonio, the Sheriff's Office reported. The investigation continued Saturday afternoon, and no arrests had been made.
