Tampabay: Tracked to Ga., teen's run ends

Lang

CLEARWATER -- The silver Honda was the lone car parked in the lot near the Statesboro Mall Cinema in rural Georgia. It was backed against a tree line so its tag was hidden.

A police officer spotted the car, then walked around to check the tag. It was a match.

Plain-clothed officers fanned through the mall next door, eyeballing every male teen in sight. Then they headed to the movie theater.

Armed with flashlights, officers and theater managers walked the aisles. They tried eight theaters, then came to the ninth and final one in the complex.

Enemy at the Gates was playing. Only two people were inside, sitting across the aisle from one another.

Officers pointed their flashlights at the yellow-haired young man in one seat. Then they pointed their guns.

Sitting in front of them was Scott Lang, the 17-year-old Pinellas County resident suspected in the shooting death Tuesday of Richard Hosking, 55.

Officers handcuffed Lang and led him to jail. Friday evening's arrest in Statesboro, Ga., ended a five-day manhunt that crisscrossed two states.

"We're breathing a very big sigh of relief now," said Michael Hosking, the victim's son. "Now justice can be served."

* * *

Lang's life on the run began Tuesday morning when investigators say he slipped through a back window of Hosking's Clearwater area home to commit a burglary, then shot and killed Hosking when he came home for lunch.

After fleeing in the family car, investigators say, Lang drove to Gainesville, where he stayed at a Days Inn; then to Tallahassee, where he bought a cell phone using a fake name; and finally to Statesboro, where he sent e-mails from a public library computer.

It was those e-mails that allowed detectives to close in on Lang's whereabouts in Statesboro.

"They literally threw a dragnet over the whole city," Sgt. Greg Tita, Pinellas County sheriff's spokesman, said.

Lang never changed his appearance, including his unusual hair style. In fact, when arrested, he was wearing the same outfit -- Hawaiian shirt, T-shirt and khaki shorts -- he wore the day of Hosking's slaying, said Bulloch County sheriff's investigator Walter Deal.

Lang has ties to Statesboro, where he lived before being adopted by a Georgia Southern University professor, Steve Lang, about 12 years ago. Steve Lang moved Scott and his older brother, Mark, to Florida about three years later.

Scott Lang had a turbulent childhood that included running away from home many times. He left home last year and lived off-and-on with Hope Presbyterian Church members, including Hosking, who took him in.

Lang told detectives he broke into the Hosking house about 9 a.m. He didn't expect Richard Hoskings, assistant director of the Pasco Health Department, to arrive home for lunch a little after noon.

Lang has told detectives he talked with Hosking after he came through the door. But Tita said some of what Lang told investigators doesn't jibe with evidence left at the crime scene. He said no other information could be released about the circumstances of the shooting.

"He admitted to the shooting," Tita said. "It's just how it transpired that may come into question in testimony later."

After the break-in, Lang found a safe in the home, along with its combination. He opened it, investigators said, and took $2,000 in cash and a .45-caliber handgun.

But he didn't leave. In fact, he began drinking ice tea and waited for Hosking's teenage daughter to come home from school. When she did, Lang assaulted the girl and kept her in the house until her mother came home about 3:30.

He sat them on a couch and talked with them for an hour, at times talking of suicide, investigators said. About 4:30 p.m., he demanded the keys to Hosking's Honda Civic and left.

Though it has been widely reported that Hosking's daughter was an ex-girlfriend of Lang's, her brother said they never dated.

"She was just a very, very close friend to him," Michael Hosking, 24, said. "And he may have taken it the wrong way."

* * *

It doesn't appear Lang befriended anyone during his days on the run, though he did visit John Bressler, pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Statesboro, on Friday afternoon. Bressler said Saturday that he could not talk about their conversation.

Lang stopped at Kinko's copy stores and libraries during his flight, where he sent e-mails to his brother and members of his church.

In an e-mail sent Thursday in which Lang expressed remorse for killing someone, he also said he was in southeast Florida.

"He was trying to get us to go south while he was going north," Tita said.

The day of the slaying, Lang drove to Gainesville. The following day he drove to Tallahassee, and by Thursday night he was in Statesboro. Each night he stayed at a Days Inn.

Apparently unbeknown to Lang, the e-mails he was sending were giving him away. Detectives began focusing on Georgia.

Deal, the Bulloch County sheriff's investigator, said Pinellas detectives asked his agency Friday afternoon to check with two people in the area who knew the Lang family. Deputies were just out the door when a call came over the radio saying the Honda had been found.

Deal said officers staked out the car and checked the mall until about 5:30 p.m., when they entered the theater and sealed the exits.

"We went through them all and he was in the last one," Deal said. "We tried to not alert the public any more than necessary. We got lucky it was him and only the one other patron.

After the arrest, Lang gave police permission to search the Honda, where they found the .45-caliber handgun, along with a .38-caliber handgun. Authorities also found $1,380 in cash, the amount left over from what he took from the safe, Tita said.

Deal said Lang will have an extradition hearing on Tuesday. Tita said investigators are hoping he will be returned to Florida early next week.

Deal said Lang did not appear at all surprised when he was arrested in the theater. He did not cry when arrested or booked into the jail. In fact, he smiled when his mug shot was taken.

"If there is any sign of remorse, it didn't come from his mug shot," Tita said.

* * *

Lang's arrest brought some comfort to Hosking's family, who will eulogize their husband and father at a memorial service today.

"My dad was such a caring and loving man," Michael Hosking said. "There are no such words to describe how great this man was."

Church members also were grappling with the death of a parishioner and the arrest of another.

"We're still trying to name those emotions," said Patty Mack, a fellow church member whose family took in Scott Lang for the last nine months. We're grieving for the loved one that was murdered, and then to deal with the whole thing with Scott."

Mack said she is proud of how the Hosking family is holding together, their faith giving them strength.

"I think that Richard would be very proud of them," she said. "I think he would be very pleased with the way they are pulling together."

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