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By CARY DAVIS
© St. Petersburg Times, published March 8, 2001
NEW PORT RICHEY -- Defense attorneys for Steven Collazo argued this week that Edward Luck's death was an accident. Collazo, they said, even checked the chamber of his father's gun to make sure it was empty before he confronted Luck about an unpaid debt.
It took a six-person jury just 30 minutes to reject the defense's argument.
The jury found Collazo, 22, guilty of first-degree murder on Wednesday afternoon after a three-day trial. Circuit Judge William Webb, as required by law, immediately sentenced Collazo to life in prison without parole.
"It's not the same as having my son here, but at least I know that the person who took his life won't be having any fun either," Luck's mother, Mona Suggs, said after the verdict.
"My son's up there giving Dale Earnhardt a high-five," she said, referring to the auto racing legend who died last month in a crash on the final lap of the Daytona 500.
Collazo, in a tape recorded interview with a Pasco Sheriff's Office detective, said he went to a Shady Hills home on March 29, 1999, to scare Luck into paying back a $250 debt. He said he took with him his father's semiautomatic .380-caliber handgun, but never intended to fire it at his friend.
Collazo said he didn't think the weapon was loaded when he pulled it out of his pants and aimed it at Luck, 20, who died almost instantly of a single gunshot wound to the head.
Defense attorney Rob Hoskins said in his closing argument Wednesday that the shooting could not have been premeditated because Collazo "looked in the chamber to make sure there was nothing in there."
Prosecutor Mike Halkitis, recalling several witnesses who testified that Collazo was familiar with guns and how they work, said the defense's theory was "beyond belief."
If the shooting was an accident, Halkitis asked, why did Collazo pick up the spent shell casing and leave the house without trying to help his friend?
"This is your friend," Halkitis said. "Wouldn't you get on the phone and call 911? Why didn't he do that? He wanted Eddie Luck dead."
Collazo, dressed in khaki pants and a white, button-down collar shirt, showed no emotion as a court clerk read the verdict. His father, William Collazo, sobbed openly when he learned his son would never get out of prison.
"I can't believe they took an innocent child and made him into a cold-blooded killer," an angry William Collazo said afterward. "They took him away from his family."
- Cary Davis covers courts in west Pasco County. He can be reached in west Pasco at 869-6236 or (800) 333-7505, ext. 6236. His e-mail address is cbdavis@sptimes.com.