Victim's brother: Ruse with cordless drill didn't thwart beatings

By WILLIAM R. LEVESQUE

© St. Petersburg Times, published March 4, 2000

LARGO -- The men carried shovels as weapons. James "Dan" Daniel stood watching them in disbelief, then frantically looked inside his friend's Chevy Blazer for anything at all to ward them off.

[Times photo: Douglas R. Clifford] James Daniel demonstrates how he threw a drill at one of the men who had beaten his brother.

The first thing he found was a cordless drill.

"I didn't know what I was going to do with it," he testified Friday. "So I concealed it by my side to try and make it look like a firearm. . . . I looked up and they basically ignored me."

The drill, Daniel said, didn't fool anybody.

Within moments, prosecutors said, the men used the shovels to fracture the skull of Daniel's brother, Jody Daniel, and a friend, Luis Collado. Such punishment, prosecutors said, was mindlessly inappropriate for the victims' offense: They drove too slowly to suit their impatient attackers.

Daniel took the stand during the second day of testimony in the Tarpon Springs road-rage case as prosecutors called witnesses who portrayed the attack as unwarranted and unprovoked.

Charged with attempted second-degree murder for the alleged March 31 attack are Theofilos Mamouzelos, 20, Christopher Stamas, 19, and Michael Saroukos, 24, all of Tarpon Springs.

If convicted, all face 12 years in prison under state sentencing guidelines.

Jody Daniel and Collado suffered brain damage and, their families say, endure lingering effects of the attack.

Collado, accompanied by three Daniel brothers -- Jody, James and Mike Daniel -- had been driving along Anclote Road in Tarpon Springs looking for an address where they were supposed to help repair a friend's boat.

Along the way, Collado slowed at a marina for the group to admire a boat in dry dock that Mike Daniel had recently piloted.

Behind them, prosecutors said, the defendants drove up, blaring their horn, angry at the slower moving vehicle.

Michael Burchell, who worked as a painter at a business nearby, testified that he saw the defendants stop their pickup truck behind Collado's Blazer. Men from both vehicles emptied onto the road in a pushing and shouting match.

"It was nothing major," Burchell said.

Then he saw two men -- prosecutors say the men he saw were Mamouzelos and Stamas -- walk back to the bed of their pickup, grabbing shovels.

As they did so, Burchell said, he heard one of them say, "They're not getting off that easy."

He said he then saw the two men beat Collado and Jody Daniel with the shovels.

"They were clearly the aggressors," Burchell said.

James Daniel testified that he saw the men approaching with the shovels. He said he yelled to them, "What are you doing? You don't need that. Nothing has even happened. . . . Put those down!"

They ignored him, he said, leading him to run for the hand drill.

Daniel said he did not witness the shovel attack. But he said he heard the shovels hitting their mark.

Daniel said he ended up throwing the drill into the chest of one of the men. Then he ran back to the Blazer looking for a better weapon. All he found was a cane belonging to Collado, who walked with a limp from a prior accident.

One of the defendants, Mamouzelos, came at him with a shovel, Daniel testified. Mamouzelos told him, "Move away from the vehicle!"

Daniel said he refused, afraid he would be hit.

But Mamouzelos did not strike out at him, Daniel said. A witness yelled that the police had been called, and then the men fled, Daniel said.

In what may prove a key element of Saroukos' defense, Daniel testified that he did not see Saroukos kick either victim, something he had earlier told police. And defense attorney Jeff Brown said his client had "empty hands."

No witness has testified that Saroukos ever swung a shovel that day.

Defense attorneys, who say Mamouzelos and Stamas used shovels to defend themselves from the Daniel brothers and Collado, are expected to begin their case today.

They portray Collado and the Daniels as "a pack of wolves" who started the fight.

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