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TAMPA - Sheriff's deputies arrested two Tampa men in connection with the shooting hours earlier of 22-year-old Javon Q. McCloud in the parking lot of Uncle Fat's Pub at 8745 Harney Road.
Hillsborough sheriff's spokesman Lt. Rod Reder said John David Spezzano, 28, of 713 W Orient St. shot McCloud three times in "a robbery gone very bad." Richard Bencomo III, 18, of 707 W Harlan St. drove a gold Buick that was used as a getaway car, according to investigators.
Reder said the confrontation began about 9:45 p.m. Thursday near a Kash n' Karry store when Spezzano went up to McCloud and asked him for a ride. When McCloud agreed, Spezzano got into McCloud's car and pulled out a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver, according to sheriff's records. Reder said Spezzano fired at McCloud three times, hitting him in the chest.
Temple Terrace police officers stopped the Buick a few minutes later at 56th Street and Puritan Road for a traffic violation, Reder said. The officers saw the driver toss a handgun from the vehicle, and then realized the two men matched descriptions released earlier in an alert from the Sheriff's Office, Reder said.
Bencomo faces charges of being an accessory after the fact to attempted murder and carrying a concealed firearm. He was released Friday afternoon from the Orient Road Jail after posting $32,000 bail, jail records show.
Spezzano is faces charges of attempted first-degree murder, armed robbery, carrying a concealed weapon and being a felon in possession of a weapon. He is being held without bail in the county jail. In 1995 he was convicted and sentenced to nearly four years in prison for burglary, according to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
McCloud was airlifted to Tampa General Hospital, where he was in stable condition Friday, Reder said.