So far, no one heard or saw two bullets pierce the window of Maria E. Luperon's car outside the post office.
By KEVIN GRAHAM and BRADY DENNIS
Published March 17, 2004
TAMPA - A woman visiting the Temple Terrace post office Tuesday afternoon called 911 after seeing what looked like two gunshot holes in the driver's side window of a parked car and noticing the driver slumped over inside.
Police said the woman in the red, two-door Toyota was dead when they arrived. Authorities identified her as Maria E. Luperon, 52, of 5909 Jenny Drive in Tampa. She lived a short drive from the post office.
About 3:20 p.m., the Temple Terrace Police Department responded to the post office at 9748 N 56th St., two blocks north of E Busch Boulevard.
The person who called 911 didn't see any suspicious activity before she saw the body, said Deputy Chief Patricia Powers, with the Temple Terrace police.
Neither did anyone else at the post office shortly after the 911 call, she said.
"There were quite a few cars in the parking lot," Powers said. "It looked suspicious when we arrived. (But) at the time of the call, (people at the post office) did not see anything suspicious."
Detectives held off on searching Luperon's car until the Medical Examiner's Office removed her body. The medical examiner's van arrived more than four hours after the 911 call. The U.S. Postal Inspector Police and Florida Department of Law Enforcement detectives helped investigate the scene.
Powers said detectives had no suspect as of late Tuesday, though she did say the killing didn't appear to be motivated by robbery or theft. She said a few leads had begun coming into the Police Department, mostly from people saying what time they noticed the car in the parking lot.
No bullet casings had been found at the scene either, she said. And detectives had yet to determine what type of gun might have been used. Powers didn't know how long the car had been parked there but said, "It wasn't there on opening this morning."
Brenda Taylor lives directly behind the post office and was at home all afternoon with a friend who was assembling a new barbecue grill in her car port.
"It's been quiet out here today," Taylor said. "Not as noisy as it can be."
From a lounge chair on her car port, Taylor said she normally hears honking horns and slamming car doors in the post office parking lot. But on Tuesday, it was "abnormally quiet" in the neighborhood.
"I don't think they could have shot her over there, because I would have heard something," said Richard Emerson, Taylor's friend. "I was out here all afternoon."
Residents responded with alarm to the news that someone had been killed in Temple Terrace, a quiet, affluent suburb of 21,000 people about 4 miles southeast of the University of South Florida's Tampa campus. The latest annual Florida Department of Law Enforcement records available show that in 2002 Temple Terrace had three homicides, compared with 37 in Tampa.
Brenda Russ showed up Tuesday night to get her mail after spending time out of town. Police kept the building off-limits to anyone who wasn't a law enforcement officer.
"I'm shocked," said Russ, who has had a mailbox at the Temple Terrace post office for more than 20 years. "It's like coming home and finding someone has disrupted something. It's just locals that come here. Most people who come here live in Temple Terrace. This is the last place I would have ever thought this would have happened."
Powers said Luperon had three children, ages 13, 16 and 24, all of them male. They were at the police station on Tuesday night answering questions to aid the investigation, but they were not suspects, Powers said.
Hillsborough court records show a woman named Maria E. Luperon was granted a divorce in September from a Mariano Luperon, 56, of Tampa. Mariano Luperon has been arrested twice locally since 2002, according to the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office.
He was arrested in April 2002 on a domestic battery charge and again in February 2003 on a charge of violating a domestic injunction. Police did not name him as a suspect Tuesday, and he could not be reached for comment.
Powers asks that anyone with information to call the Temple Terrace police at 989-7110.
