A deadly capturing riles a Tampa canine park. Was it self-defense or extra sinister?

The day earlier than a person fatally shot John Walter Lay in his favourite Tampa canine park, Lay stood within the park and recorded a video.

He had simply had a run-in with a person who, based on Lay’s family and friends, had been harassing him on the park for months, hurling homophobic slurs and threatening him.

Standing close to one of many park’s towering timber, the morning solar shining on his face, Lay talked into his telephone’s digital camera.

“So this morning while I’m walking — and we’re the only two here — he comes up to me and screams at me, ‘You’re going to die, you’re going to die,’ and I asked him to just leave me alone, and so far he has,” Lay says within the video.

Friends say that the subsequent morning, on the identical park and at about the identical time because the earlier morning’s encounter, the person shot Lay lifeless. He was 52.

As of Thursday, the shooter has not been arrested or charged. The Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office has launched few particulars about what occurred and didn’t difficulty a information launch concerning the capturing till 4 days after it occurred, and solely after a Tampa Bay Times reporter requested about it. The company mentioned the Hillsborough State Attorney’s Office will resolve whether or not to file legal fees within the case.

The sheriff’s workplace on Thursday confirmed that 65-year-old Gerald Declan Radford was the shooter.

In a textual content message to a Times reporter, Radford indicated he shot Lay in self-defense.

“I was attacked. I defended myself. End of story,” the textual content mentioned.

He despatched a second textual content advising the Times to contact the sheriff’s workplace for data. When requested for a telephone interview, he responded that the sheriff’s workplace has his telephone, and he declined a request to fulfill in person, saying that he was “in no fit state.”

Asked if he had an legal professional, he responded: “I have done nothing wrong.”

Lay’s household and buddies informed the Times that they don’t consider Radford’s account. They mentioned Lay had been going out of his approach to keep away from Radford and so they believed he would solely have gotten in a combat to defend himself.

Albert Darlington, Lay’s pal and landlord, mentioned Radford, who goes by Dec, despatched him a textual content the subsequent day claiming Lay “attacked me at the park and I had to defend myself.”

“In my opinion, there’s no way in hell this is really self-defense,” mentioned Darlington, 68. “For over a year, Dec has done nothing but harass Walt. He screams and hollers and calls him a f—-t every time he gets to the dog park. He’ll sit there and he’ll say, ‘I’d like to punch him right in the f–king mouth’ … and it has gotten worse and worse and worse.”

A brand new household, escalating harassment

The buddies Lay made on the canine park had been an enormous a part of why he stayed in Tampa slightly than transfer nearer to his household, mentioned his sister, Sabrena Lay Hughes.

Lay was born in Kokomo, Indiana, a 12 months after Hughes. He acquired picked on in class as a result of he was redheaded, Hughes mentioned.

“Boys would be trying to beat him up, and he wasn’t a fighter even as a child,” mentioned Hughes, who lives in North Carolina. “He would just run to my hall.”

The siblings had been nonetheless young after they moved with their father to the Atlanta space. Lay liked horses, and a few mornings his household would wake to discover him asleep on the again of his horse grazing within the pasture.

In highschool in Paulding County, Georgia, Lay performed soccer and did props and set design for theater productions. After commencement, he served about 4 years within the U.S. Navy earlier than transferring to Tampa within the Nineties to be close to buddies, Hughes mentioned.

Here, Lay shared a home with one other man named John, so he began going by his center title, Walter or Walt, his sister mentioned.

Most just lately, Lay labored in customer support for a well being care firm, serving to individuals fill prescriptions on-line, and delivering meals and driving for Uber within the evenings.

Lay had contemplated transferring to North Carolina to be nearer to Hughes, or again to Indiana to be close to his mother. But he started to develop a stronger sense of neighborhood in Tampa after he adopted a black mixed-breed shelter canine he named Fala. Lay began going to the West Dog Park, typically a number of instances a day, so he and Fala might train, his sister mentioned. The county park is a sprawling, tree-shaded expanse in unincorporated Tampa, simply north of Tampa International Airport.

“He found all these friends at the dog park and he was like, ‘They’re just like a family here, I just love meeting everyone and their dogs and learning about their lives,’” she recalled.

Will Meyer, 71, described Lay as his finest pal and mentioned they met in the future when walking their dogs on the park. Lay began to repeatedly come over to eat dinner with Meyer and his household.

Lay “was the most friendly person you could ever imagine,” Meyer mentioned. “He was nice to everyone and treated everybody as a human being.”

Meyer mentioned Lay settled in with an enormous group of canine park buddies. But throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the pal group cut up because of political variations.

”One group was somewhat bit liberal and the opposite facet was bleeding somewhat an excessive amount of to the precise,” Meyer mentioned. “It escalated and one group would meet at one corner of the park and the other group in another.”

Lay and Radford had been initially on pleasant phrases. But after Radford discovered about Lay’s politics, and that he was brazenly homosexual, Meyer mentioned, Radford started to focus on Lay, calling him slurs when he was walking within the park.

Darlington, Lay’s pal and landlord, mentioned Lay and Radford had differing views on politics and society and that Lay “leaned to the left and Radford leaned to the right.”

A Times evaluate of Radford’s Facebook web page confirmed it contains reposted memes which might be disparaging to LGBTQ+ individuals.

Lay’s buddies mentioned that Radford’s conduct towards Lay escalated into harassment.

“Then it got to where when Walt would walk by, Dec was trying to get him to bump into him so he could start a bunch of crap,” Darlington mentioned. “I even said to Dec, ‘What are you trying to do, harass (Lay) until he jumps so you can kick his ass?’ And all he would do was smile and look at me.”

Lay informed buddies he didn’t wish to give in to Radford’s bullying by avoiding the canine park. Darlington and others mentioned they urged Lay to report the harassment to police.

”And Walt was like, ‘Well, I don’t wish to get the cops concerned and make it worse,’” Darlington recalled.

Hughes mentioned her brother would relay how Radford was being aggressive towards him and the way it was inflicting friction of their group of buddies, so Lay mentioned he determined to maneuver to a different a part of the park. His buddies adopted him, Hughes and others informed the Times, which appeared to additional irritate Radford.

Though Lay was reluctant to get the police concerned, his buddies mentioned that he did take recommendation to start out documenting his interactions with Radford.

Friends mentioned the video he made the morning of Feb. 1 on the park was his first one, and he despatched it to a pal that morning.

“Walt attacked me and I had to defend myself”

On the afternoon of Feb. 2, hours after the capturing, Radford texted Darlington a photograph of himself with what seemed to be bruising below one eye and an abrasion above considered one of his eyebrows.

“I’m so sorry to tell you, Walt attacked me and I had to defend myself,” the textual content mentioned. “I never thought he would go for me. I really sorry. I really had no choice he was too crazy.”

Darlington didn’t know but that Radford had fatally shot Lay.

”My first impression was, this appears such as you’re building an excuse for one thing that already occurred,” Darlington mentioned. “Little did I know that Walt was already dead.”

He referred to as Lay’s quantity and acquired no reply. That evening, he woke to test if Lay had returned home. He questioned if Lay was in jail or the hospital.

Darlington went to the park the subsequent morning and didn’t see anybody, so he referred to as somebody who often visits the park.

“He said, ‘Oh, you didn’t hear?’ and he told me that Dec had shot Walt and killed him,” Darlington mentioned.

His thoughts went again to the textual content Radford had despatched a day earlier.

Meyer mentioned the day Lay was shot, a mutual pal referred to as and mentioned one thing horrible occurred on the canine park.

”Immediately I assumed to myself, Walt was killed,” Meyer mentioned.

Friends converged on the park. When Meyer arrived, he noticed 15 to twenty police vehicles. Radford acquired out of considered one of them.

”We appeared round at one another and I assumed, this man simply killed our pal and he’s not in handcuffs?” Meyer mentioned. “It was unbelievable to us.”

He and others mentioned they consider that Lay’s killing was not self-defense.

It’s unclear if there have been witnesses on the park on the time of the capturing or if the sheriff’s workplace has obtained any video that might shed extra gentle on what occurred.

The sheriff’s workplace on Wednesday launched to the Times 9 pages of the investigative report on the case. Nearly all of it was redacted. It included Lay’s title and birthdate, and indicated that he was shot with a semi-automatic handgun.

The Times on Thursday despatched the sheriff’s workplace an in depth record of questions. The workplace declined to reply some, citing an lively investigation, however confirmed that Radford referred to as 911 after the capturing, that detectives had been conscious of the video Lay made the day before today and that they had been “diligently investigating every avenue, including speaking to individuals who have come forward.”

Unanswered questions

Hughes mentioned the sheriff’s workplace has shared together with her household few particulars concerning the investigation. The household realized from his loss of life certificates that he had been shot within the chest and the spherical perforated his coronary heart, aorta and lung.

In the weeks earlier than his loss of life, Lay had been working time beyond regulation to land a bonus he might use on a visit to Indiana to go to his mom, Hughes mentioned. Instead, she got here to Tampa final weekend to gather private results from his home, together with a number of the many work the lifelong artist had made.

Hughes believes Radford focused her brother, although she doesn’t know if it was as a result of he was homosexual.

“People that want to be angry can find a reason to hate, and so I believe that he just hated my brother and it ate away at him,” she mentioned.

She mentioned she needs to see justice performed for her brother, although she mentioned she’s unsure but what that appears like.

Hughes mentioned she had deliberate to take Fala again to North Carolina. But her brother requested a pal to maintain the canine if something ever occurred to him.

In the tip, Hughes determined to respect that want. And apart from, Lay’s household reasoned, Fala can be happier with the Tampa pack he already is aware of.

Times workers writers Dan Sullivan and Hannah Critchfield contributed to this report.