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After life of crime, freedom was hard

Weeks from the end of his probation, a career criminal and bank robbery suspect was shot and killed by an officer while resisting arrest.

By KEVIN GRAHAM
Published July 21, 2006

TAMPA - Just days before he died, James Baldwin called his older brother to talk during what he knew would be his last moments of freedom.

"I don't have a lot of time. They're coming," he told Jack Baldwin.

Police suspected James Baldwin, 56, of robbing a South Tampa bank last week. They already had a man in custody identified as the getaway driver. Baldwin knew it was a matter of time before they caught him, too.

He told his brother he planned to confess.

But when police found him at a friend's North Tampa apartment Wednesday night, officers say, he didn't admit the crime. He reached for a gun instead.

The friend said Baldwin ran to a back bedroom, and screamed at police, "Go ahead and shoot me! Shoot me!"

By then, police had already used Taser guns, trying to subdue Baldwin. But those had no effect.

So, when Baldwin yanked a BB gun from a zippered bag, Master Patrol Officer Billy A. Lamb pulled the trigger on his gun, fatally wounding Baldwin.

Debbie Carter, a spokeswoman for the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office, said the silver marksman BB repeater looked like a semiautomatic gun.

The Sheriff's Office is investigating the shooting because it happened in its jurisdiction, at the Ashton Park Apartments, 2024 E Bearss Ave. And the Police Department is conducting its own internal affairs investigation.

Lamb, 39, a 15-year veteran with the Tampa Police Department, has been placed on routine administrative leave while those inquiries are carried out.

"Jimmy struggled. He always struggled with doing the right thing," said Jack Baldwin, 57, a professional race car driver living in Marietta, Ga. "When we were teenagers, I used to call him the great manipulator because he used to like to manipulate the situation."

Not much changed as James Baldwin grew older. After being kicked out of more than one Tampa high school, including Hillsborough and Chamberlain, he attended military school.

But jailhouse orange and prison blues were the only uniforms in his future. James Baldwin spent nearly half his life behind bars.

In 1993, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison on burglary and robbery charges. He received a 15 year sentence in 1983 for robberies in Hillsborough and Pinellas counties.

"Jimmy had a drug problem," his brother said. "That was the constant factor that drew him back to the life of crime."

Jack Baldwin said he didn't expect it to take his brother's life. After their recent 45-minute telephone conversation, Jack Baldwin said he had found peace in knowing his brother would soon be back in prison.

"He was incarcerated for so long, he had gotten used to it," Jack Baldwin said. "The outside world was an overwhelming situation."

In three weeks, James Baldwin would have been off probation. Eleanor Barone, who lives in the apartment where police shot Baldwin, said the thought of complete independence intimidated Baldwin.

"To him, freedom was like being a slave," said Barone, 45.

"You've got to go to work. You've got to pay bills. He said he didn't know how people did it. He was scared."

"I don't know what I'm going to do then," Baldwin told Barone about his upcoming release from probation, she said. "I'm really going to be alone."

She tried hard to convince him otherwise. "Freedom is so valuable, Jimmy," Barone said she told him. "Don't you see that?"

Barone answered the door Wednesday when police came calling. The knock came just after 6 p.m.

"Jimmy, somebody's here to see you," she told Baldwin, knowing immediately who it was.

Baldwin panicked after he came to the door, and an officer pushed him against the wall inside, trying to handcuff him. But Barone said he fought back and got loose.

He ran down the hallway into one of the bedrooms, out of Barone's sight, but not of out earshot.

Inside the bedroom, Carter, of the Sheriff's Office, said Baldwin began digging through zippered bags and came up with the BB gun.

"Go ahead and shoot me! Shoot me!" he screamed, according to Barone.

Then she heard shots.

Barone said she wishes Baldwin hadn't tried to fight the officers.

"It could have been simpler if Jimmy just did what he said and put his hands behind his back," she said.

Jack Baldwin said he'd been his brother's biggest cheerleader. He'd given him $8,000 in the past six months, but James Baldwin had nothing to show for it.

"Once he got high, it was over," Jack Baldwin said. He thinks his brother may have been high on meth.

On Thursday, Barone stood in the doorway of her apartment holding a cigarette in one hand and a recent picture of her with Baldwin in the other. "He was my best friend," she said, pausing occasionally to cry.

Before Wednesday, Barone said, she hadn't seen Baldwin for a week, and he usually stopped by more often. He liked to cook, she said, and would use her kitchen to try out new recipes while they visited. They were old friends.

When she asked where he'd been, he told her he hadn't been around because he'd robbed a drug dealer, but she never bought that story.

The personnel file for Officer Lamb is filled with glowing evaluations. In September, Lamb wounded a robbery suspect in the arm after he pointed his weapon at police.

"Lamb's coolness under stress and decisive actions may have prevented the injury or death of other police officers at the scene," one of Lamb's supervisors wrote about the incident.

Barone said she remembers the look in the officer's face after he shot Baldwin.

"The guy who shot him, his face seemed so sad," she said. "I don't think he meant to kill him."

Times researcher Cathy Wos and staff writer Rebecca Catalanello contributed to this story. Kevin Graham can be reached at kgraham@sptimes.com or 813 226-3433.

[Last modified July 21, 2006, 00:14:54]