After he was questioned in a fatal shooting, the Pasco man takes his own life.
By STEVE THOMPSON
Published October 31, 2004
HUDSON - A couple of hours after a shotgun blast killed Robert Seeman on Friday night, deputies found their leading suspect, David Mason, in a nearby bar.
They questioned him and, lacking evidence to make an arrest, took him home.
Mason called his girlfriend, Petro Jones.
"It was an accident," he told her. "Tell my kids I love them."
Moments later, deputies heard gunshots from Mason's home and went to investigate. Mason yelled at them through the door, then put a rifle under his chin and pulled the trigger, said sheriff's Lt. Gary Kling. Mason died immediately, officials said.
Mason was thought to have fired the shotgun round that killed Seeman at a home at 9410 Ogalala St. in Hudson, the Sheriff's Office said. The blast went through the front door and hit Seeman, who was standing behind it.
One pellet kept going, ripping through the back of the home, across an empty lot, over the next street and through the window of 7-year-old Taylor Thibeault. It whizzed under Taylor's bunk and into the far wall of her room.
"My daughter was on the top bunk, thank God," Cindy Thibeault said. "Usually, she sleeps on the bottom."
Authorities said Saturday they were not sure what prompted the shooting, but Mason told deputies drugs were the reason he had been at the house.
Jones, Mason's girlfriend, said Saturday that he did not give her any details during their brief conversation before he killed himself. She said she had never known him to be involved with drugs.
Jones and Mason had been together at a sports bar on State Road 52 earlier in the evening, she said. They had left, and she had dropped him off at his home at 12533 First Isle about 10 p.m.
It was unclear why Seeman was at the home where he was shot. A friend of his lives there. Two others were inside during the shooting, sheriff's officials said.
Cheryl Loughin, a member of Seeman's family, said she thinks Seeman probably wasn't the killer's target. The gun's blast ripped through high in the door, she said, but Seeman happened to be 7 feet tall.
"How many guys are really 7 feet?" she said. "I think maybe the guy was just trying to scare them or something, and that's why he killed himself when he found out what he did."
Neither Mason nor Seeman had criminal records in Florida, records show.
Jones and Mason had a 4-year-old son together, and Mason had three more children in Maryland. He ran a business refilling toner for copy machines. He was an enthusiastic fisherman and a talented cook who would fix up smoked mullet and steamed blue crabs for his friends, Jones said.
Seeman was the father of two children, one 11 months old, the other 6 weeks.
Family members said he was an easygoing young man, a hard worker. He had been working six and seven days a week recently as a painter, they said.
"He had his problems in life like everybody else," said his stepfather, Reuben Loughin, "but he was a good kid."
