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14-year-old charged in shooting death
By WAYNE WASHINGTON © St. Petersburg Times, published November 17, 1998 Tampa police said Samuel Hewitt admitted to shooting an unidentified teenager in the back of the head early Nov. 9 after he refused to pay Hewitt and his older brother for crack cocaine. Police said Robert Hewitt, 16, later hid a Beretta 9mm handgun used in the killing. He has been charged with tampering with evidence, a third degree felony. Both brothers were arrested Saturday at their home at 9507 N 13th St. and were being held Monday at the Juvenile Assessment Center on Martin Luther King Boulevard. At a news conference Monday, police sought the public's help in identifying the victim: a white male in his mid-teens, 6 feet tall, 170 pounds, with hazel eyes, dark hair, a small goatee and a thin mustache. He was wearing gray sweat pants over green shorts with white and blue tennis shoes. He had a small heart-shaped tattoo on the top of his hand between his finger and thumb. Tampa homicide Sgt. Dan Grossi said anyone with information about the man should call police at 276-3544. Assistant State Attorney Pam Bondi said prosecutors will likely seek to have Samuel Hewitt indicted and tried as an adult. He could face life in prison if convicted of first degree murder. Grossi said both Hewitts have criminal records. Samuel Hewitt, he said, was under house arrest at the time of the shooting and had been scheduled for a hearing on a marijuana possession charge today. News of the boys' arrests barely raised eyebrows on the 9500 block of N 13th Street, where the shooting occurred. Grossi said the area is a notorious drug market. Indeed, long before the school day ended Monday, young boys on bicycles looped around slow-driving cars on the street. Older men leaned on cars. Neighbors said people come into the neighborhood to buy drugs, and the boys are all too eager to meet that demand. Yancy Brown, who lives with his sister, said neighbors learn quickly to ask few questions and to keep out of other people's business. That was impossible early on Nov. 9, he said. Someone -- he wasn't sure who -- banged on their door, screaming that a man had been shot. Brown said his sister called 911 and tried to help the man before emergency workers arrived. She could not be reached for comment Monday. The man was taken to Tampa General Hospital. He died Wednesday. Grossi said police interviewed a prostitute who was with the man when he attempted to buy drugs. The prostitute said she thinks the man might have been working with a carnival in the area at the time. Meanwhile, on Monday, Linda Hewitt was still trying to cope with the news of her sons' arrests. She spoke steadily over the din outside her old wood frame home. Hewitt, 39, said she had spent Friday night with her boyfriend and returned home about 7 a.m. Saturday. "The cops were all over the place," she said. "I didn't know what was going on. I thought (her sons) were hurt. Then, when I saw them, I thought everything was all right." Then police told her her sons would be charged in connection with a murder. Hewitt said she still can't believe her youngest child, the one she said has had trouble with depression, could go to prison for life. She spoke of Samuel as if he was already gone. "He was like a normal child," Linda Hewitt said. "He's not a violent person, not someone who who would hurt a person, a human being." If Samuel Hewitt did what police say he did -- and she insisted she believes he didn't -- Linda Hewitt said she can think of only one thing that would make such a horrible thing possible: drugs. "I don't believe my child could have done that," she said. "If he did it and they prove he did it, it had to be drugs. My children have never led me to believe they'd go out and kill somebody."
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AMPA -- A 14-year-old boy has been arrested and charged with first degree murder after what police say was a drug deal gone bad.
