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Drowning sparks protest of Kmart pond
By LOGAN D. MABE
© St. Petersburg Times, CARROLLWOOD -- When Nancy Hart's son didn't come home from the VA Medical Center on March 19, she did what every good mom does. She worried. "I stayed home waiting for the phone to ring or the doorbell," said Mrs. Hart, 69. "It was hell." She waited, worried and wondered for 28 days before Hillsborough County sheriff's investigators came to her home with the news that 45-year-old Joseph William Hart had been found dead in a retention pond behind the Kmart shopping center at Mission Bell Plaza. "To lose a child is the worst thing," Mrs. Hart said. And that's the reason she, husband David and son Steve took up the cause to try and pressure Kmart into fencing the lake. "I couldn't live with myself if a child were to fall into that pond," Mrs. Hart said. The retention pond where Joseph Hart died is just off Orange Grove Drive, south of Fletcher Avenue. He was found just a few feet from a place where children from a neighboring apartment complex board the school bus. Kmart, which owns the land on which the retention pond sits, disagrees. "It's my understanding that the individual died of natural causes," said Kmart spokeswoman Susan Dennis. "It's unfortunate, but at this point in time we don't have any intention of fencing the area off." So, the Harts stayed up half the night Wednesday making the fluorescent signs they planned to use to picket the store. Mrs. Hart even called the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office to make sure she wouldn't be breaking any laws by protesting the corporation's refusal to fence the pond. David Hart said his son Joseph had been treated off and on at the James A. Haley VA Medical Center in Tampa as a result of a truck accident he suffered while serving in the military in Panama. Joseph Hart, who had hepatitis C and an addiction to pain medication, was preparing to undergo treatment for the hepatitis just before his accident, David Hart said. The Harts surmise that Joseph, who was traveling home by bus that day, went into the woods surrounding the retention pond to relieve himself. "He had a massive heart attack and went face-first into the pond," David Hart said. "It's just one of those crazy situations where a 45-year-old man wanders in there and never comes out." Mrs. Hart said she began calling Kmart officials almost immediately after learning of her son's death. "I got right on it," she said. "I talked to (the store manager) I don't know how many times on the phone. I came here on a Saturday and went back to his office, and I tried to be peaceful. We were getting along fine until he started this nonsense, and then I jumped up and said a bad word." Retention ponds are regulated by the Southwest Florida Water Management District, which has specific rules on when ponds need to be fenced. Swiftmud spokesman Michael Molligan said ponds must be fenced when they slope down more than 12 inches over a 4-foot span. It appears that the rule does not apply to the Kmart pond, which has a gradual slope around its banks. But the Harts say they will persist. Asked how long he plans to continue picketing the store, Steve Hart didn't even have to think about it. "As long as it takes," he said.
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