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Police: Man shot when he confronts driver

By REBECCA CATALANELLO
Published March 17, 2006

TAMPA - Michael John Steiner was pulling out of a Bank of America exit at 7 p.m. Thursday when something coming toward him really ticked him off.

A green Ford Explorer with a few dings in it was barreling in the wrong direction in an exit lane. "Hey, you're coming in the wrong way!" Steiner called out to the driver from his red 1990 Pontiac, according to Tampa police Lt. Charles Courtoy.

The man in the Ford Explorer shouted back - it might have been an expletive, if Steiner's account to police is right.

So Steiner got out of his car. The 43-year-old walked to the driver's side of the Ford Explorer. He pounded one of the truck's windows with his hand, shattering the glass all over the parking lot at 10050 N Florida Ave., according to what he told police.

The driver of the Explorer shot Steiner in the side and took off south on Florida Avenue, Courtoy said.

The Tampa man was taken to St. Joseph's Hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

Police were still searching for the driver of the Explorer late Thursday. He was described as being 40 to 50, black, with a thin build, wearing glasses and a light colored T-shirt. The vehicle had writing on the side, police said.

"This was all over people driving," Courtoy said as he stood in the parking lot of the Mobil gas station next door to the bank. "One didn't like the way the other was driving and it got escalated to gun play."

As the lieutenant spoke to a reporter more than an hour after the incident, a driver in a car and a motorcyclist turning off N Florida Avenue onto Linebaugh Avenue exchanged heated words. And a few feet away at the Mobil station, a driver waiting to leave honked at the person in front of him to hurry up.

[Last modified March 17, 2006, 02:13:59]