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Fiance is sought in slaying
By RICHARD DANIELSON © St. Petersburg Times, published December 1, 1998 Across the street in the working-class neighborhood of Highland Pines, neighbor Judi Thomas remembers that Lucas, 39, had a black eye, stitches on her scalp and a cast on one arm. "She said that he had beat her up and busted her head open, and she wanted everybody to keep a watch out for him, because he was going to kill her," Thomas said of 40-year-old Ricky R. Vann. On Monday, police say Vann chased Lucas down the street where she lived and shot her dead in a stranger's yard a half-block from Lucas' home. Police issued an arrest warrant Monday afternoon charging him with first-degree murder. Officers still were looking for Vann Monday night. On Oct. 25, Vann was charged with domestic violence. He was accused of grabbing Lucas by the face and neck. The next day, Lucas went to the Hillsborough County Courthouse and got a temporary restraining order to keep Vann at least 500 feet from the home they sometimes shared. That day, Lucas wrote that Vann had attacked her at her house at 3401 N Cord St. "He came inside the house and started yelling, pushing and shoving me around," she wrote. "I asked him to stop and go back outside, but he refused and kept right on. He continued to curse me and push me around." Court records show that she received a temporary restraining order that day, but the case was dismissed 10 days later after Lucas did not show up for a court hearing. Police spokesman Steve Cole said there was also an active Hillsborough sheriff's warrant for Vann's arrest. Sheriff's Detective Lisa Haber said the charge was aggravated battery -- meaning Vann is accused of hitting someone with a weapon or striking a disfiguring blow -- and that the victim was Lucas. Neither Cole nor Haber had details about that incident, but neighbor Jackie Wilson said Lucas' daughter Christin said Vann drove Lucas to a remote area outside of Tampa, hit her in the face with a brick and left her to die. On Monday, Thomas said she didn't see anything unusual but at about 10:30 a.m. heard a "boom, boom, boom" that made her wonder whether someone was trying to break into her car. Neighbors said Lucas, who wrote in her domestic violence petition that she worked as an accounts payable clerk at JCPenney in West Shore Plaza, had a teen-age daughter, Christin H. Wright, as well as an older daughter with a baby of her own. Hillsborough court records show that since 1990 Vann has been charged five times with misdemeanor domestic violence. In each case, except for the most recent one last month, he pleaded no contest and was sentenced to a year's probation. On one occasion, he violated his probation by getting arrested and charged with spousal abuse again, and was sentenced to 10 days in jail after having the probation revoked. "She was a nice person," Wilson said. "I just wished she would have got out of this relationship."
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AMPA -- A few weeks ago, soon after she got a court order to keep her abusive fiance away from her, Gwendolyn Faye Lucas told her neighbors to keep an eye out for him.
