Hoops player shot to death
Robinson High School, already reeling from the death of Kwane Doster, loses freshman Johnathon Simmons to a shooting in Bradenton.
By BILL VARIAN
Published December 29, 2004
BRADENTON - Johnathon Simmons was so good as a freshman on the Robinson High School basketball team that he was nearly bumped to the varsity squad for a pair of December tournaments.
But Simmons, 15, twisted an ankle about two weeks ago and was scratched from the lineup. So instead of competing this week, he went to Bradenton to visit his father for the holidays, said his Robinson coaches.
There, early Tuesday, he was fatally shot at a block party that formed in east Bradenton after teen night at a nightclub, the Bradenton Herald reported. He was pronounced dead about 3 p.m. Tuesday at All Children's Hospital in St. Petersburg.
"Words can't describe how awful it is to see a nice young man with his full life ahead of him lying in that bed," said Simmons' homeroom teacher, varsity basketball coach Steve Smith Jr., who went to the hospital when he got the news.
It was the latest in a series of losses to rock the South Tampa high school.
Former Robinson football star Kwane Doster was shot and killed in Ybor City early Sunday, on holiday break from Vanderbilt University.
Lance Cpl. Andrew J. Aviles, a former class president, died on a bridge outside Baghdad on April 7, 2003, after enemy artillery struck his assault amphibian vehicle. He was 18.
And Robinson principal Kevin McCarthy, 39, died of a heart attack Nov. 16, 2003. Smith said the school has also lost a former guidance counselor and head custodian in the past two years.
"Everybody at Robinson is kind of shaking their heads," Smith said. "Man, this is unbelievable, the amount of death the school and community has had to endure in the last couple of years. There's been a lot of tragedy in our school."
Bradenton police have issued a warrant for a 17-year-old male believed to be from Bradenton in connection with the shooting. They did not provide a motive or any other information about the suspect.
Officers responded to the 2100 block of E 15th Avenue in northeast Bradenton about 1:50 a.m. Tuesday. They found Simmons lying in the roadway. He was shot in the head, Manatee County Emergency Medical Services spokesman Capt. Larry Leinhauser told the Herald.
Police interviewed witnesses who said they heard shots fired but had not seen anything, according to an initial report. The report indicates that police collected a gold chain with a gold and diamond charm, but it is unclear who owns the charm.
Witnesses said several of the young people gathered at 15th Avenue had been at Club Heat in south Bradenton. The club closed at 1 a.m. Many of the teens went to a McDonald's restaurant, then to a RaceTrac convenience store before meeting on 15th Avenue, witnesses told police.
Cars lined both sides of the street in a working class neighborhood of neatly kept lawns. An argument started, and shots were fired.
Shantrell Miller, 17, who lives across the street from where the shooting took place, saw the kids hanging out.
"Then the boys started fighting, and then started shooting," Miller said. "I ran into my yard when I heard the shots."
Another neighbor, 30-year-old Derek Logan, told the Herald he also heard a gun going off, and saw, through a window, people running down the street.
"I heard someone yell, "Someone got shot!' " Logan said. "There was a group of people gathered around the boy who got shot. He looked pretty young."
Robinson junior varsity basketball coach Josh Saunders said Simmons moved to Tampa not long before his freshman year began.
He joined the basketball team as a shooting guard and averaged 21.5 points a game.
Saunders said academic work did not come easily to Simmons, but that he was learning to do a better job balancing his school work and academics. He was polite and respectful, Saunders said.
"He was a very talented player, but a better kid," Saunders said. "This is definitely not the phone call you want to receive at 9 in the morning."
Coach Smith last talked to Simmons on Christmas Day. The teen called the coach's cell phone, reaching him on vacation in Ohio.
Simmons wished his coach a merry Christmas.
"This is what kind of kid he is," Smith said.
Times staff writer Jamie Thompson, correspondent Jim Reese and Bradenton Herald staff writer Sylvia Lim contributed to this report.