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The victim's family says the landlord had been asked to improve security at the shopping center.
By ANITA KUMAR
© St. Petersburg Times, published March 15, 2000
ST. PETERSBURG -- Virgil Sargeant sat in a courtroom Tuesday and tried, for the fourth time, to hold someone accountable for his wife's murder.
Three men already are behind bars for the robbery and shooting of Tonya Sargeant on Dec. 9, 1995. Now, Sargeant wants to prove Publix Super Markets -- the landlord of the shopping center where his wife was killed -- also is responsible because of a lack of security.
Sargeant blames Publix for not making Northeast Shopping Center safer by hiring security guards, trimming bushes and adding better lighting, even after merchants asked the company to.
"This case is about security, which, had it been there, more likely than not this wouldn't have happened," said Council Wooten, Sargeant's attorney. "This was a preventable event."
A six-person jury will decide this week whether Publix should be held liable for Mrs. Sargeant's death and how much, if anything, the supermarket chain should pay in damages to her family. The trial in Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Court is expected to wrap up by Friday.
Publix attorneys said Tuesday in opening statements that the company could not have prevented the botched robbery in the parking lot outside the Eckerd drugstore.
"This was a tragic event, no question," said Robert Wallace, Publix's attorney, "but you can't just hold Publix responsible for something like this."
Sargeant, an assistant manager at Eckerd's, was shot once in the head as she and another employee, 17-year-old Nicholas Meza, walked out of the store after closing around 10:30 p.m.
The gunman, Matthew Ben Rodriguez, had been hiding for at least 30 minutes in the center's thick bushes. When he grabbed for the bag Mrs. Sargeant was carrying, the gun he pointed at her head fired. Rodriguez has said the shooting was accidental.
Rodriguez and his two accomplices, including Eckerd employee Mark Richard Thomas, expected Mrs. Sargeant's bag to be holding $6,000 to $12,000 in store receipts. In fact, it contained nothing but the 44-year-old woman's toiletries.
Rodriguez and Thomas were convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life. Donald Joseph Miller cooperated with prosecutors and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Much of Tuesday's testimony came from Ronald Lynch, a crime prevention expert who reviewed the case and said it was "foreseeable" that a robbery or similar crime would occur in the parking lot. He also said such crimes can be prevented if action is taken.
"Minimum things could have been done but Publix, by their behavior, decided not to do anything," said Lynch, a former Miami police officer who is a lawyer and a professor.
David Fanning, who used to own an ice cream shop in the shopping center, said in the early 1990s the merchants' association discussed security several times and the problems they had with shoplifting, muggings and vagrants. They asked Publix to hire security guards, but the company refused, he said.
When Meza testified that he saw Mrs. Sargeant get shot, Virgil Sargeant cried quietly to himself and wiped his face.
"It's very, very, very stressful," said Sargeant, during a break from the trial. He said this week's trial is slightly easier than the ones in criminal court, but "it still hurts."
The couple had been married about five years and were living in a southwest St. Petersburg apartment complex when Mrs. Sargeant was killed.
Sargeant, who also worked as a manager for Eckerd, still lives here with his son from a previous marriage. Mrs. Sargeant had three children from a previous marriage.