Body in Pinellas tied to fatal chase in Citrus
An abandoned car on U.S. 19 near where an SUV was stolen belonged to the homicide victim.
By VANESSA DE LA TORRE and JORGE SANCHEZ
Published November 8, 2005
A man who died during a police chase in Citrus County is a suspect in a St. Petersburg homicide and a recent string of Pinellas County robberies, authorities said.
David Khalil Mansour, 43, died Saturday night after leading authorities through two counties on U.S. 19. The next day, a Pinellas County sheriff's deputy found the body of a man inside an apartment at Townhouse Northwest, 6156 58th St. N, in St. Petersburg. The victim has been identified as John A. Brennan, 68.
The deputy had gone to the complex to check on the man, whose car was found abandoned not far from where Mansour stole the sport utility vehicle he would later crash.
Citrus detectives discovered items inside the stolen SUV that linked Mansour to an abandoned vehicle owned by the dead man.
Before the fatal police chase, Mansour confided to someone that he had committed a murder and a bank robbery, police said.
Mansour is suspected in the Oct. 26 robbery of the Schooner Motel, 14500 Gulf Blvd. in Madeira Beach; the Nov. 3 robberies of Cornerstone Community Bank, 7800 Seminole Blvd., and the Bank of America, 14805 Gulf Blvd. in Madeira Beach; and the attempted robbery the same day of Colonial Bank, 7600 Seminole Blvd. in Seminole. Surveillance videos, a composite sketch and other evidence suggested the robberies were the work of one man, police said.
The chase began after Mansour abandoned the dead man's car in a ditch along U.S. 19. About a mile away, a 21-year-old Citrus woman left her 2002 Ford Escape running outside a convenience store. She was paying for cigarettes when she saw her SUV heading out of the parking lot.
The stolen SUV was soon seen by a Citrus deputy, who started chasing the vehicle south on U.S. 19 toward Weeki Wachee in Hernando County.
With three Citrus cruisers trailing him and units from Hernando ahead, Mansour abruptly reversed course and headed back toward Citrus. The car reversed direction again near a police roadblock in Citrus County.
But Hernando deputies had deployed a device that punctured the SUV's left front tire. After about a mile, Mansour veered off the road and crashed into a line of trees. He died later at Oak Hill Hospital in Spring Hill.
Inside the wrecked Ford Escape, detectives found evidence linking Mansour to an abandoned vehicle in a U.S. 19 ditch. Authorities traced the car to a Brennan, who was living at a St. Petersburg apartment.
About 4:15 p.m. Sunday, Pinellas Deputy Brian McDowell knocked on apartment J-3. When no one answered, the deputy entered the apartment through an unlocked rear door. Brennan had been dead for days, authorities said.
It's unlikely that Brennan was an accomplice to the robberies, said sheriff's spokesman Sgt. Jim Bordner.
Mansour had a criminal history that includes arrests for battery, reckless driving with bodily injury and leaving the scene of an accident. His former wife, 40-year-old Lisa Butz of Ohio, said Mansour had "a rich man's mind but a poor man's pocket."
She said she married Mansour at age 21, but the couple divorced when she was 25.
"He was a gambler, always wanted a fast buck, and I couldn't live that life with him," she said.
-- Researcher Carolyn Edds contributed to this report.