Police had planned to arrest Leroy Brown on suspicion of selling drugs. But something spooked him, ending the plan.
By CHRIS TISCH
Published April 10, 2004
LARGO - Undercover officers bought cocaine from Leroy Brown four times without any trouble. They documented the buys while building a case to charge him with selling drugs.
The plan was to seal the deal Thursday night. But things didn't go as planned.
A female undercover officer agreed to meet Brown at the Sunoco gas station on Clearwater-Largo Road. After she bought drugs from him, other officers planned to move in to arrest him.
Officers in an undercover van and several police cars waited nearby, listening to transmissions from a wire the female officer was wearing.
But as the female officer got into the back seat of Brown's car, something spooked him. While the officer was halfway in the car, Brown backed up the car, hitting a taxi parked near a gas pump. There were two other passengers in the car besides Brown and the officer.
The officers waiting nearby could hear something was wrong. The group in the van revved into the parking lot, blocking the exit.
Brown put his car in drive and sped ahead, side-swiping one officer and accelerating toward the others. Two of them opened fire.
Authorities said that was what led to the death of Brown, 46, of Clearwater, who was hit by three bullets in the upper torso and waist. He was taken to Largo Medical Center after the 8:19 p.m. shooting and pronounced dead at 8:57 p.m.
The two officers who fired, Detective Joe Coyle and Detective Paul Amodeo, were placed on paid leave, which is routine after an officer-involved shooting.
Neither Coyle, a 14-year agency veteran, or Amodeo, a six-year veteran, have ever been involved in a police shooting, said Police Chief Lester Aradi.
Both are members of a tactical apprehension and control team that was assembled to help arrest Brown, a common procedure in drug cases, Aradi said.
Coyle investigates robberies, sex crimes and homicides. Amodeo works as a youth services detective.
Because both men are detectives, Aradi notified Sheriff Everett Rice from the scene and asked him to investigate. Rice agreed.
"I didn't want investigators in this department investigating their own partners," Aradi said.
The State Attorney's Office also will review the shooting, as will Largo's internal affairs division.
"Based on what I know so far, these officers were in peril themselves because the car was coming at them and, in fact, struck one of the officers," said Largo's Deputy Chief, John Carroll.
That officer, John Trebino, suffered minor abrasions but did not go to the hospital. The female officer was injured and went to Largo Medical Center, where she was treated for wounds to her leg and neck that she received when Brown reversed the car. She was at home Friday on medical leave.
Aradi did not release the name of the female officer.
Court records show Brown has been arrested about 30 times in Pinellas County, many times for drugs. In recent weeks, Largo's narcotics team learned that Brown was dealing drugs in their city.
Aradi formed the narcotics team in 2001. Because so many of Largo's more serious crimes were drug-related, he believed a drug team could eliminate some of the city's crime problems.
In 2002 and 2003, the team made almost 200 arrests and seized more than 43 pounds of marijuana, almost five pounds of cocaine and about nine ounces of crack cocaine, said Detective Madeline Koceja, who has been with the unit since it was formed.
Koceja said the team has received many complaints recently from the neighborhood surrounding the Sunoco station, 1403 Clearwater-Largo Road.
"It is an area we targeted," she said. "That area is one where we get a lot of complaints from people seeing things going on."
Aradi said police purchased drugs from Brown numerous times because they wanted "to establish the fact that this was indeed not an isolated case of somebody selling a drug one time, but that this was a pattern of criminal activity on the part of this individual."
Police didn't say what may have spooked Brown into trying to reverse the car while the officer was still partly out of the car.
"As the guy was backing up she was half in and half out, so she's being jostled as this guy is accelerating back toward the cab," said Mac McMullen, a sheriff's spokesman.
That's when nearby officers heard the transmissions over the wire.
"They heard her say words to the effect of "stop, where are you going?' " Aradi said. "And they realized at that point that she was in trouble."
McMullen said the officer and another passenger in the back tumbled out of the car. Another woman was in the front seat next to Brown. Officers, including Coyle and Amodeo, were getting out of the van when Brown gunned the car into drive and came toward them. That's when they fired, McMullen said.
No one else was injured, though a woman vacuuming her car in the parking lot had a close call. Brown's car plowed into hers as she was vacuuming, smashing it and driving it into a phone booth, which was knocked over.
"She was just there vacuuming her car innocently," McMullen said. "She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, essentially."
