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Dan Sullivan

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Tampa, United States
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Covers:  cops, crime, public safety, courts, mental illness, death penalty, prisons, breaking news, juvenile justice
Courts and criminal justice reporter for the @TB_Times. Storyteller. Trial watcher. Submitter of public records requests. Man about town. I hate Twitter.
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The fire inside: Manatee County finds itself at the epicenter of a heroin epidemic

The fire inside: Manatee County finds itself at the epicenter of a heroin epidemic

Tampa Bay Times — BRADENTON - He hadn't heard from her in hours, which was unusual. Even if she was upset, even if she was high, Angel never ignored a text message. His last one to her lingered. Baby, I know you're probably busy, John Blodgett wrote. But I was just letting you know I was thinking about you. He had tried calling. No answer. He had sent her a Facebook message. No response. He had phoned the Taco Bell where she worked. She had been a no-show that day. Blodgett knew about his girlfriend's addiction to heroin.
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As shooting deaths surge in Tampa, E.J. Harris, 14, becomes a statistic

As shooting deaths surge in Tampa, E.J. Harris, 14, becomes a statistic

Tampa Bay Times — TAMPA - He watched his brother take a knife to the chest in a fight over a bicycle. He munched on Cheetos in his eighth-grade science class. He had his cap stolen at gunpoint. He played basketball in the park, close to home. He ran from a gunman as bullets whizzed past his head. He refused to miss a day of school, even after his mother died. This was how Edward "E.J." Harris IV spent the last months of his life. He died May 31 at the age of 14, killed in a drive-by shooting.
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Parents' rocky relationship preceded girl's death near Skyway

Parents' rocky relationship preceded girl's death near Skyway

Tampa Bay Times — RUSKIN - Michelle Kerr sat in the shade of her front porch Thursday afternoon, trembling, with tears streaking her cheeks. On a table beside her, two frames held a collage of pictures of her daughter Phoebe, a rosy-cheeked girl with long dirty-blonde locks, who shared her mother's broad smile. Kerr spoke of the girl and her own tumultuous relationship with Phoebe's father, John Jonchuck Jr. For Phoebe, she used words like bright, artistic, angel. For him, she used words like liar, manipulative, hurtful. Kerr spoke of the times he hit her, the times the cops came, and how he stopped her from seeing their daughter.
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Mentally handicapped are held for years without trial

Mentally handicapped are held for years without trial

Tampa Bay Times — BARTOW - Dreek Drayton spent nearly a decade locked up because of a crime he says he didn't commit. He never faced trial. No jury ever convicted him. And ultimately, a judge dismissed the charges against him. Yet, year after year, state authorities held on to him based largely on allegations from an accuser who would eventually refuse to testify. Most anyone else would have walked free. But Drayton, 55, isn't like most people. He is intellectually disabled. And in a court of law, that makes all the difference. Drayton cannot face trial because he has been ruled mentally unfit to help in his own defense.
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'Zombies' and seizures: Tampa Bay discovers it has new problems with spice (w/video)

'Zombies' and seizures: Tampa Bay discovers it has new problems with spice (w/video)

Tampa Bay Times — TAMPA At first, no one seemed to notice the two men sitting on the short wall across from the Marion Transit Center. With eyes shut and heads bobbing, the pair swayed, their limbs twitched. One man, wearing a red shirt bearing the phrase "Southern Muscle," began to have a seizure.
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Police say man charged with murder hit 1-year-old with belt

Police say man charged with murder hit 1-year-old with belt

Tampa Bay Times — TAMPA - A few minutes after 8 on Saturday night, Tiffany Williams was clocking out of work when she got the call. "Something's wrong with the baby," said her boyfriend, Austin Hamilton. "He's not breathing." She thought he was joking. Then dread overcame her. She told him to call 911 and bolted from her job at Phantom Fireworks on Nebraska Avenue. She raced down the block to the Motel 6, room 164. On a bed, her baby lay clad in a diaper. His face was purple. His cheeks were sunken. Hamilton hovered over him, a phone to his ear, the other hand pumping lightly on the boy's chest.
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A man too crazy to be executed

A man too crazy to be executed

Tampa Bay Times — Inside Union Correctional Institution in Raiford, a man with drooping, yellowed skin and graying temples sits for 23 hours a day, every day. He eats a hot meal at 5 a.m., 10:30 and 4 p.m. Once every other day, he showers. The rest of the time, he is alone in a sweltering 6- by 9-foot cell, thinking whatever thoughts run through the mind of a man who once claimed transsexual communist agents were trying to poison his food. His name is Gary Alvord. For almost 40 years, he has waited out a death sentence he received for the 1973 murders of three women in Tampa.
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Larry Mann executed for Palm Harbor girl's 1980 killing

Larry Mann executed for Palm Harbor girl's 1980 killing

Tampa Bay Times — STARKE - Larry Eugene Mann, who crushed a little girl's skull 32 years ago, died Wednesday night as chemicals coursed through his veins. Mann was executed by lethal injection at Florida State Prison for the murder of 10-year-old Elisa Vera Nelson, whom he abducted one morning in 1980 as she rode her bicycle to school in Palm Harbor. He was pronounced dead at 7:19 p.m. He was 59. Afterward, Jeff Nelson, Elisa's brother, stood in the light of a setting sun outside the prison, joining a crowd of about 50 people who turned out to offer support.
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Man faces felony murder charge in Valrico fire

Man faces felony murder charge in Valrico fire

Tampa Bay Times — VALRICO - The man had been pacing the street for hours. Nancy Ball first noticed him just after sunset Sunday as she sat inside her screened porch watching the Tampa Bay Buccaneers' game on a small TV set. The man, she noticed, was carrying a hammer. Ball, 68, clutched her phone, poised to dial 911, as the man approached her door. "Can you please take me to the mental hospital?" the man asked. Ball told him she couldn't help him. He walked away, but soon returned and asked again. "If you need help," she told him, "I can call the police for you."
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DNA tests ID Mississippi murder victim as Brandon man's sister (w/video)

DNA tests ID Mississippi murder victim as Brandon man's sister (w/video)

Tampa Bay Times — BRANDON - A decade after her charred body was found in Mississippi woods, authorities have confirmed that a once-nameless murder victim is the long-lost sister of a Brandon man. For two years, investigators have run tests to determine if the unidentified woman known as "Rosa Doe" was Asenath Mary Woodin, who lived in Hills­borough County in the 1990s. The effort began in 2011 when Woodin's brother, Arthur Jones, phoned the Tampa Bay Times and asked for help in locating his sister, whom he had not seen in 11 years. A reporter discovered the Rosa Doe case and noticed physical similarities between the unidentified woman and Woodin.
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Overnight search ends in tragedy as missing Tampa toddler's body found in Hillsborough River

Overnight search ends in tragedy as missing Tampa toddler's body found in Hillsborough River

Tampa Bay Times — TAMPA - They gathered at the water's edge, not long after the sun broke through darkness that had lasted too long. Many had been up all night - hoping, praying, combing the grassy slope along the riverbank. Two-year-old Armani Pierce vanished Tuesday night after a youth football practice in Temple Crest Park, along the shore of the Hillsborough River. Four different law enforcement agencies and a legion of volunteers, many of whom didn't know the boy, joined the search. "It's extremely personal," said Jay Tillman, coach of the Tampa Bay Ravens youth football team. "It's personal because it's a child."
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Families dismayed that arrest not made in boating crash that killed two

Families dismayed that arrest not made in boating crash that killed two

Tampa Bay Times — TREASURE ISLAND - On a sunny afternoon in 2005, a boat barreled through the waters near John's Pass and collided with a personal watercraft. The two people aboard the craft, Corey Vincent, 19, and Joe Battista, 23, were killed. The boat's driver, Miguel Alvarado, sped off until another boater chased him down. On Alvarado's boat, police found about a dozen empty beer bottles. He refused a sobriety test but investigators noted he had bloodshot eyes, slurred speech and stunk of booze. Instead of arresting him, investigators let him go home.
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