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Week in reviewCompiled by Times staff writer © St. Petersburg Times, published November 12, 2000 FUQUA GUILTY: A jury convicted a Lutz man Tuesday of fatally stabbing a visiting serviceman at a bar fight in Ybor City. Mike Fuqua, a 24-year-old repeat felon, will likely spend the rest of his life in prison. His attorney said he would appeal. The March 14 killing may long be remembered in Tampa for the sight, captured on a bystander's videotape, of Fuqua running down Seventh Avenue away from Jeremiah "Jeff" Kleiss, 22, who is pulling up his pale blue shirt to see where he has been stabbed. Police distributed the tape in a successful effort to identify Fuqua. Prosecutor Jim Shoemaker harped on the tape, noting a sequence in which Fuqua faced off with Kleiss, appeared to open a knife, then moved quickly past Kleiss with his arm outstretched. The jury convicted Fuqua of second-degree murder. Sentencing is Dec. 15, but prosecutors invoked a state law applying to recently released prison inmates, which they said virtually guaranteed a life sentence with no parole. Fuqua had been out of prison only nine months, following a robbery sentence. RAPE AT PARK PROMPTS CALL FOR POLICE: City Council member Charlie Miranda said he would order police patrols at Copeland Park in the wake of this month's rape of a woman who was at the North Tampa park with her four small children. The woman's attacker forced her into a clump of bushes near the park's basketball courts by holding what turned out to be a toy gun to her head the morning of Nov. 1. There, he raped and beat her. Police arrested 12-year-old Tavaris Knight, and the Hillsborough County State Attorney's Office announced Thursday he will be tried as an adult for the crime. At a community meeting Thursday, residents told city officials they need more police officer patrols and more lights. Some recalled that the park felt much safer when park rangers could carry guns and make arrests. In early 1998, the city took away the rangers' law enforcement role, and their guns. "When we lost our park ranger, we were told not to worry, that we were going to have police patrolling the area on a regular basis," said B.J. Thomas, who lives in the Briarwood subdivision. "But as far as I can tell, that hasn't happened." Neighborhood Watch leader Betty Schaffer said she stopped taking her grandchildren to the park after the rangers left. STRAWBERRY SENTENCED: Baseball great Darryl Strawberry of Cheval will remain behind bars, but not for the year prosecutors recommended. Instead, Hillsborough Circuit Judge Florence Foster decided to impose a sentence of 30 days in the county jail, followed by house arrest at a local drug treatment facility. The suspended New York Yankees slugger had said that spending 15 days in jail had opened his eyes. "I probably would have died some kind of way" if he hadn't gone to jail, he said. Strawberry, 38, violated his drug offender probation for the third time when he walked away from a drug treatment residence Oct. 21 to smoke crack cocaine and take Xanax, a mood-enhancing prescription drug. He is recovering from an aggressive form of colon cancer that requires chemotherapy and other treatment. With credit for time spent in jail since his arrest, Strawberry will get out this week. Then he will be fitted with an electronic monitoring device and begin substance-abuse treatment at the Health Care Connection. On top of two years of house arrest, Strawberry faces a year of probation and continued drug testing. He is banned from driving.
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