Hillsborough: Neighbor charged in shooting

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Neighbor charged in shooting

Neighbors try to understand what led to the shooting of Devin Rhodes, who helped Jerry Hart with his garden.

By AMY HERDY

PLANT CITY -- A 13-year-old boy was helping his elderly neighbor shuck corn about 10:30 a.m. Sunday when the older man went inside his house and came out with a gun.

"Want to see my new toy?" 75-year-old Jerry Hart asked the teenager and an adult neighbor who was standing nearby.

The teen, Devin Rhodes, and 37-year-old neighbor Patricia Glover watched as Hart fired a shot in the air. A second shot misfired, deputies said. Then, officials say, Hart wordlessly aimed the .22 semi-automatic handgun at Rhodes, whom he has known since the teen was a baby.

"He pointed it right at him," Glover said. "He didn't say a word. He pulled the trigger, and boom! All I could do was scream."

Shot in the chest, Rhodes, a sixth-grader at Turkey Creek Middle school, stumbled to the home of a neighbor who drove him to South Florida Baptist Hospital. The teen was later transferred by helicopter to Tampa Children's Hospital at St. Joseph's, where he was listed in critical condition.

After Hart fired the gun, Glover said, he told her, "I didn't shoot him."

Then Hart put the gun back inside his house and waited outside, sheriff's spokeswoman Debbie Carter said. He refused to let sheriff's deputies enter the home to retrieve the gun. Soon, his 81-year-old wife, Ruby, returned from church and let deputies enter the home.

Deputies charged Hart with attempted homicide, Carter said, and took him to Orient Road Jail where he was being held Sunday night with no bond. Hillsborough jail records show Hart was charged in May 1997 with obstructing or opposing an officer and leaving the scene of an accident, but the disposition of those charges was not available Sunday.

Sunday afternoon, residents of this quiet rural community south of Plant City couldn't understand why the man they knew as "Mr. Bo" would want to hurt the teen who had often helped him in his garden by his home at 5210 Clarence Gordon Jr. Road.

"I asked him why he shot my son," said Pam Rhodes from her son's hospital bedside. "He said he didn't know."

From his hospital bed, Devin Rhodes said he did not believe the shooting was an accident.

"When he pointed it (the gun) at me, he pulled the trigger," he said.

Sheriff's spokeswoman Carter would not comment on a motive for the shooting. She said Hart's wife had indicated he suffered from Alzheimer's disease.

Glover said Hart, who is white, referred to Rhodes, who is black, with a racial epithet just minutes before the shooting. Glover, who is white, said Hart told her not to let the teen into his house.

Rhodes said he did not believe the shooting was racially motivated, and Carter said it did not appear to be a factor in the case.

Whatever the reason, Glover said, there was no excuse for the elderly man pointing a loaded gun at the teen.

"He tried to kill him," she said.

At Hart's home, a half-dozen cars and trucks lined the driveway, but no one inside would talk to reporters. Outside the front door, three buckets of husked corn sat against the wall.

Pam Rhodes said she had known Hart for years, and had never thought something like this would happen. Devin had just finished eating breakfast when he took off down the road on his bicycle, she said. Minutes later, Glover knocked at her door to tell her that her son had been shot.

More than feeling angry over the incident, she said, she was thankful her son was still alive.

"He's so lucky."

Rhodes said the bullet was slowed by her son's left arm, which he had raised to cover his face. It went through the arm and entered his chest, piercing a lung.

The teen then ran a short distance to the home of another neighbor, Kevin Taylor, where he beat on the door for help before collapsing.

"He was sweaty, scared, bleeding," said Taylor, who decided not to wait for an ambulance and helped other neighbors scoop Rhodes into his pickup truck for the 10-minute ride to the hospital.

Taylor and others described Rhodes as an outgoing teen who loved to ride his bicycle around the neighborhood, and who had often helped Hart work in the gardens to the side and rear of Hart's single-story, wooden-shingle home.

Barbara Hill, who lives a few yards from the Rhodeses and described them as family, said everyone in the area either knew each other well or was related.

"We all look out for each other," said Hill, who described the Harts as "good people" and Devin as "the sweetest child."

"This is not some thug kid we're talking about," Hill said of the teen. "This is a sweet kid."

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