The 32-year-old nephew of a Turkish man's wife is accused of quarreling with the husband before shooting him and abducting his grandson.
By RICHARD DANIELSON
Published September 4, 2004
TARPON SPRINGS - Police have charged a family member with first-degree murder in last month's fatal shooting of Safa Gul and the abduction of Gul's young grandson.
Suspect Sitki Ozkardes, 32, is the nephew of the victim's wife. The shooting and abduction are thought to have stemmed from family problems, including a dispute over a large sum of money, police said Friday.
Detectives arrested Ozkardes about 9:30 p.m. Thursday at the Chevron gas station, 600 Main St., Safety Harbor, where he worked.
Ozkardes is charged with shooting Gul in the head and chest with a small-caliber pistol the afternoon of Aug. 18. Gul, 50, was babysitting his 16-month-old grandson, Ibrahim Gul, at the family's home in the Harbor Oaks subdivision when he was killed.
Another family member, East Lake High School student Cihan "James" Gul, 16, arrived home from school about 2:30 p.m. that day to find his stepfather dead and his nephew missing. Police issued a statewide missing child alert for the toddler and sent his photo to Tampa International Airport so airport officials could watch for anyone trying to leave with the boy. Ibrahim was found unharmed about eight hours later in the parking lot of an Oldsmar shopping plaza.
Detectives identified Ozkardes through forensic evidence left in the Gul home, police said. They would not say what that evidence was. Ozkardes did tell investigators that he had not been inside the Gul home for more than eight months.
Detectives also learned that he had had problems with Gul's family in the past.
"The family discussed some ongoing family problems, so he was a person of interest early in the investigation," Tarpon Springs police Sgt. Jeff Young said.
Ozkardes, of 1025 Philippe Parkway, Lot 29A, was charged with murder, armed burglary and kidnapping. He was being held without bail Friday at the Pinellas County Jail.
Gul's family buried him in his hometown of Adana, a city in south-central Turkey, two days ago.
In a telephone interview from Turkey, the victim's son, 23-year-old Oktay "Sal" Gul, said the family remains distraught over his father's death and the idea that someone once close to the family could have committed the crime.
Oktay Gul praised the work of Tarpon Springs police detectives Scott Brockew and Robert Faugno.
"They both basically ate, slept and sweated . . . this case until it was solved," he said. "I've never met anybody like that in my life. They are good, good, good people.
"As a family, we appreciate so much what Tarpon Springs (police) have done," he said.
The fact that there were no witnesses to the shooting and that police needed an interpreter to do interviews made the investigation especially challenging, police said.
"Because of the cultural differences and language barrier, it was probably one of the more complex cases I've been involved with," said Faugno, a law enforcement officer for 15 years and Tarpon Springs' lead homicide investigator for nearly seven. "We basically had to learn their culture and how they dealt with family issues from scratch."
Police used an interpreter who works with the FBI and Florida Department of Law Enforcement and also received help from the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office, Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney's Office and U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
"From the moment this case started, it's been a very complex and difficult case to piece together," Young said. "It's like putting together a puzzle without a painting on it or a picture on it."
In addition to the criminal charges related to the shooting, Homeland Security's immigration and customs enforcement division also is investigating whether Ozkardes violated immigration laws, police said.
Ozkardes was born in Turkey and came to the United States four or five years ago, Young said. In an arrest report, Faugno wrote that Ozkardes told an unidentified witness on two separate occasions that he killed Gul because of the dispute. He requested an attorney after his arrest Thursday, police said.
Police said Safa Gul had borrowed money from Ozkardes more than a year ago and had not repaid it. But they said the dispute involved more than money.
On Friday, Oktay Gul said his father did not owe Ozkardes any money. To the contrary, he said, Safa Gul spent a lot of his own money helping Ozkardes when he first came to the United States.
Ozkardes has had one previous encounter with police, but it was as a victim of a crime. In 2002, he was stabbed in the head during a robbery of a Palm Harbor gas station where he was working. The suspect was chased and caught by an Army Special Forces sergeant, an off-duty Tarpon Springs police officer and sheriff's deputies.
Staff writer Chris Tisch and researcher Carolyn Edds contributed to this report.
