Law enforcement

Tarpon Springs police officer shot and killed overnight

By Mike Brassfield, Katie Mettler and Laura C. Morel, Times Staff Writers

Sunday, December 21, 2014 8:19am

TARPON SPRINGS — A veteran Tarpon Springs police officer and father of five was shot and killed early Sunday while responding to a call from an apartment complex.

Charles Kondek, 45, was a 17-year veteran of the Tarpon Springs Police Department and had spent many years on the midnight shift.

A suspect in the shooting was apprehended after a car chase, authorities said. After the suspect crashed his car, police officers found him hiding beneath a wooden staircase.

A married father of five children, Kondek had been a New York City police officer for five years before moving to Florida and joining Tarpon's police force, said Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri. His father is a retired NYPD officer.

The Kondek family lives in Pasco County, where Kondek's wife works for the Pasco County Clerk of Courts. Their youngest child is a 15-year-old daughter whose soccer games Kondek attended regularly.

Investigators say Kondek was shot shortly after 2 a.m. at a small apartment complex at 199 Grand Blvd. in Tarpon Springs. The location overlooks the northeast side of Spring Bayou, the site of Tarpon's annual Epiphany celebration in early January.

Kondek was rushed to Florida Hospital North Pinellas, formerly known as Helen Ellis Hospital, where he succumbed to his injuries.

Just after the shooting, the suspect fled the crime scene in a car and was pursued by police, said Pinellas sheriff's spokeswoman Cecilia Barreda. Nearly a mile north of the scene, he crashed into a pole at Athens and Cross streets in the city's Sponge Docks tourist district, near a restaurant called Mama's Greek Cuisine.

He was apprehended there, Barreda said. It didn't appear that anyone else was in the vehicle, and Barreda couldn't confirm whether the suspect was injured in the crash.

It was closing time in the Sponge Docks district, and Tarpon resident Tommy Mahinis was standing in the street with friends by Zorbas nightclub when he saw the white car barrelling down Athens.

Tires screeching, the car rammed into a telephone pole on the driver's side, rocking it onto two wheels, he said. The car fishtailed and plowed into the back of a Ford truck belonging to Mahinis' buddy.

"What the hell is going on?" Mahinis, 47, thought to himself.

"He was going so fast and it was so loud," Mahinis said.

Seconds later, the man inside opened the door and darted away. Mahinis said his instinct was to chase him.

"I had no idea what he had just done, but you hit my buddy's brand new truck and you're gonna get it," he said.

Mahinis followed the man up Athens and watched him turn left on Cross Street. Almost immediately, uniformed officers funneled in beside him. They found the man hiding beneath a wooden staircase and seized him, Mahinis said.

"He kept lipping off," Mahinis said.

Darrin Assenza, 23, has just moved into his new home on Cross Street Saturday night. Early Sunday, he heard a loud crash and walked outside to investigate.

He saw a police officer tackling a man to the ground in his neighbor's driveway, right next door to the staircase the man was hiding beneath.

Assenza said the man at first refused to get on the ground, but when an officer pulled his weapon the man complied.

"It was so dark," Assenza said.

On Sunday afternoon, a small pool of blood could be seen on the concrete driveway.

Duke Energy workers who were repairing a light pole said they saw five bullet holes in the driver's-side door of the suspect's car before it was towed away.

Investigators are currently interviewing several witnesses. The suspect is in custody at Tarpon Springs' police station, where local residents have already started dropping off bouquets of flowers to memorialize the fallen officer.

"There are a lot of unknown questions at this point," Gualtieri said of the investigation. "It's all unfolding."

Kondek's death is the first fatal shooting of a Tarpon Springs police officer in the line of duty since 1926, said Joe Vockerichian, executive director of the Gold Shield Foundation, a charity that assists the families of officers killed on duty.

The last time a Tarpon officer died while on duty was in an automobile accident in 1969, he said.

This is the first death of a Tampa Bay area law enforcement officer in nearly four years. On Jan. 24, 2011, St. Petersburg police Sgt. Thomas Baitinger and K-9 Officer Jeffrey A. Yaslowitz attempting to serve a warrant on a fugitive suspect when they were shot and killed in a confrontation with the armed man in the attic of a house.

In Tarpon Springs, witnesses in the area reported hearing several gunshots early Sunday.

Christopher Clay, 37, was smoking a cigarette upstairs at the Tarpon Inn on Tarpon Avenue, where he works, when he heard shots sometime after 2 a.m. Soon afterward, he said, officers and crime scene technicians arrived and began cordoning the area with yellow tape.

Several city blocks were taped off Sunday morning as sheriff's deputies and a forensic team collected evidence. Yellow numbered evidence markers littered the ground on Grand Boulevard, near two parked police cars. A crime scene technician photographed the scene.

Rickie and Carolyn Barnes were jolted awake Sunday morning to the piercing crack of several gunshots, they said. The couple lives just blocks from the scene of the fatal shooting.

"It's very strange," said Carolyn, 61. "This place is so peaceful."

When the shots rang out, Rickie, 66, reached across the bedside table to peek outside the window and knocked over the alarm clock. It was 2:16 a.m., he said.

Only minutes later, Carolyn said she heard tires squeal and then two separate crashing noises.

The couple said sirens blared and helicopters circled for nearly an hour. They saw law enforcement officers walking the area, searching through bushes and a nearby garage.

The shooting scene is familiar to them. They walk that street every day on their way to Spring Bayou. Their son lives nearby as well.

"It's just quiet and friendly. The neighbors are great," Carolyn said. "It's just hard to believe."

Source: http://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/crime/tarpon-springs-police-officer-shot-and-killed-overnight/2211053