Tampa teenager's car prank leads to a deadly accident

By Times staff writers

© St. Petersburg Times, published August 3, 2000

TAMPA -- It all started as a joke, a prank among friends. But it ended with one man dead in a car wreck and the teenage prankster charged with causing his death.

Police said 17-year-old Kharee L. Capers of 4203 W Laurel St. took his friend's 1995 white Chevy Camaro from the area of Grady Avenue and Walnut Street as a joke. Capers doesn't have a license, so he only drove a few blocks away; just enough for his 17-year-old friend to think his car was missing.

Perhaps Capers didn't expect his friend to flag down a Tampa police officer and ask for help finding his missing car, said police spokesman Joe Durkin. When that officer approached Capers as he sat in the Camaro on W Nassau Street near Hubert Avenue, Capers panicked, police said. Capers took off, Durkin said, gaining such speed in one block that he blew through the stop sign at Lois Avenue.

"The officer is still standing at Hubert and Nassau looking down the street when he hears the crash and sees the debris flying," Durkin said.

John A. Spencer, 42, of 1503 Kinsmere Drive in New Port Richey, was driving south on Lois in his 1994 Pontiac Grand Prix when Capers came charging into the intersection, Durkin said.

"He smashed into the passenger side," Durkin said. "There was so much velocity that it crunched that side and pushed the car across the road, through a fence and into that front yard."

The officer who approached Capers ran down the block and tried to free Spencer from the smoking car, but he was already dead.

Police caught Capers, who was not injured, minutes after the crash, arrested him and charged him with vehicular homicide, reckless driving, felony leaving the scene of an accident, and driving with no valid driver's license.

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