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SEFFNER - Sheriff's officials say Henry J. Lattarulo, 6 feet tall and 230 pounds, was armed with a screwdriver and boiling with rage when a female deputy confronted him Saturday afternoon in a junk-filled yard east of Tampa.
Ultimately, it took four more deputies, a Taser gun and several strikes of a baton to subdue Lattarulo, according to information released Monday. But soon after deputies handcuffed the 40-year-old convicted drug offender, he stopped breathing. Rescue workers tried CPR but couldn't revive him.
His death comes more than a year after the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office announced that its deputies would carry Tasers, in the hopes that the electric stun guns could make deputies safer while reducing the number of deaths of suspects who turn violent.
Sheriff's spokesman Lt. Rod Reder said the agency is investigating Lattarulo's death, and all five deputies involved have been placed on administrative leave pending the outcome.
But Reder stood by the methods used to control Lattarulo, including the Taser.
"The Taser is not going to work in every case," he said. "But we had a man acting crazy with a screwdriver and scissors."
Members of Lattarulo's tight-knit Italian-American family say the Taser's jolts of electricity might have dealt a fatal blow to Lattarulo's heart, which was weak due to hereditary problems and years of cocaine use.
With 22 arrests since 1995, he was the most troubled member of his family. But relatives insist he did not deserve to die so young, leaving behind six children.
"It hurts," said Lattarulo's 72-year-old father, Vito Lattarulo. "Henry was no angel. But he was my son."
Reder said Deputy Wendy Barth, a 12-year veteran of the Sheriff's Office, went to a home at 11414 Davis Pool Road on Saturday after its residents said a mentally ill man was threatening them with a screwdriver and scissors.
Just two days earlier, Lattarulo had been released from the county jail after a January arrest on charges of cocaine possession and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, jail records show.
Lattarulo went after Barth, 39, when she got out of her patrol car, so she stung him with her Taser, which is supposed to temporarily paralyze the body. The Taser didn't seem to faze him, Reder said.
"He just pulled them (the Taser's barbs) out," Reder said. "This poor female deputy was fighting for her life."
Barth struck Lattarulo several times with her baton, but that didn't squelch his strength either, Reder said.
Within a few minutes, four more deputies arrived. Lattarulo tried to take one of the deputies' Tasers but couldn't get it to fire, Reder said.
Finally, after a "lengthy" and fierce fight, the deputies handcuffed Lattarulo, Reder said.
Lattarulo stopped breathing shortly after that.
Barth was treated for a leg injury. Deputies Robert Coates, Robert Dykes, Katherine Jaeger and Pat Nelson were not injured, although Reder said they all "looked like they'd just been in a fight with a really big guy."
The agency is waiting for the results of an autopsy and toxicology tests to determine what caused Lattarulo's death and whether he had drugs in his system at the time.
"If you're high on PCP or cocaine, you might not feel anything when the Taser hits you," Reder said. "This guy just kept going."
Several local law enforcement agencies besides Hillsborough use Tasers, including the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office and Clearwater Police Department. Tampa police Chief Steve Hogue has ordered them for his patrol deputies.
But they're not without controversy. Orange County was sued in 2002 by the family of a man who died after his arrest, in which deputies shot him 11 times with a Taser. He stopped breathing after he was handcuffed and restrained facedown on a stretcher.
Lattarulo's relatives acknowledge he had a drug problem. They say he has for years gone to the house on Davis Pool Road for his drugs.
They say that when he went there Saturday, he was settling an argument over money with Charlotte Conway, 48, who wrote him love letters while he was in jail. In arrest records, Conway lists the Davis Pool home as her residence.
County property records show the house and land at 11414 Davis Pool Road are owned by Larry Leroy Macon, 55. Macon has been arrested 22 times in Florida, starting with his first arrest in Tampa in 1981 on a charge of marijuana possession, according to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
No other arrests were made Saturday. Reder would not say if detectives are investigating whether Macon's home is a drug house.
"I will just say we've been in that area before for some drug activity," Reder said.
- Shannon Colavecchio-Van Sickler can be reached at svansickler@sptimes.com or 813 226-3373.