Author: John Cotey

New Tampa News Brief Digest

Steven Reynolds, 70, shot his stepdaughter to death Nov. 23 before turning the gun on himself and committing suicide at Florida Hospital Tampa near the USF campus at 3100 E. Fletcher Ave.

Reynolds shot 41-year-old Alonna Tedesco (photo) just after 7 a.m. Monday morning on the hospital’s third floor, according to Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office (HCSO) spokesperson Donna Lusczynski.

Reynolds died at the scene. Tedesco initially survived the shooting, but after deputies transported her to an emergency room, the efforts to save her failed.

Officials said they were unsure of the motive. Investigators were looking at hospital security footage as we went to press.

The shooting was contained to the hospital room, and the hospital continued normal operations after the incident.

Tedesco was at the hospital visiting her mother Mary Reynolds, who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease. She recently wrote on her Facebook page beneath a photo of her mother, “All I have to say is Alzheimer’s is a horrible disease! This wonderful woman at the age of 67 looks like the epitome of health! Her body is in great shape yet her mind is so ill! I wish I knew how to cure this disease, I miss my mom!”

According to reports, Tedesco was married to prominent Land O’Lakes physician Dr. John Tedesco. They lived in the Lake Jovita Golf & Country Club neighborhood of Dade City.

Alonna has worked as the school nurse at Hudson Middle & High schools since August.

“As much as this tragedy saddens the Pasco County Schools family, it also affects Mrs. Browning and me personally,” said superintendent of schools Kurt S. Browning in a prepared statement. “We have known Alonna for many years and are shocked to learn of her horrific passing. She was a good friend and a talented professional. Our thoughts and prayers are with her friends and family.”

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Twistee Treat Gets Unexpected Visitor

Cameron Blake Jackson has given new meaning to the term the “drive-through” as he drove his vehicle smack dab into the Twistee Treat on the corner of New Tampa Blvd. and BBD on Nov. 23. And for a tip, he left his car.

Jackson originally rammed into the front of the Twistee Treat around 5 a.m. in the morning, and fled the scene on foot.

Around 10 a.m. Jackson contacted the police to say his vehicle had been stolen. The information he provided about his vehicle matched the description of the vehicle police had impounded earlier that morning. Questioned by police, Jackson, who was here on business from Texas, admitted to crashing the car into the Twistee Treat and walking two hours back to his hotel.

Jackson was issued a criminal citation for hit and run.

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Car Thieves Thwarted

Early in the morning on Nov. 2 a stolen car was identified by a Tampa police officer in New Tampa, and after a two-county pursuit, ended in south St. Petersburg with seven people detained by the St. Petersburg Police Department (SPPD).

According to TPD, at approximately 3:39 a.m., Sgt. O. Rosa was on Tampa Palms Blvd. at Bruce B. Downs (BBD) Blvd., when he discovered the car ahead of him at a traffic light had been reported stolen. Rose initiated a pursuit, which he eventually backed off of as it was picked up by a TPD helicopter, which tracked the car all the way to 15th Avenue S. and 7th Street S. in St. Petersburg.

Several of the suspects in the car jumped out and ran into the house, which was quickly surrounded by Tampa and St. Petersburg police officers.

Seven people were detained and transported to the St. Pete Police Department for interviews.

There were no injuries or crashes reported in the pursuit.

The joint effort between Hillsborough and Pinellas law enforcement began on Aug. 14, with SPPD Chief Anthony Holloway saying at a news conference that:

“We recognize that although our jurisdictions are defined by geographical borders, crime is not. In order to address this type of crime pattern and fight the rising number of auto thefts more effectively, we recognize that there is a need for an ongoing, collective enforcement effort.”

Comparing Jan. to June figures in 2014 with 2015, TPD reported a 47.4-percent increase in motor vehicle thefts. St. Petersburg police reported a 23 percent increase, while the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office had a 31 percent increase.

The majority of the stolen vehicles, it should be noted, were unlocked.

The Auto Theft Task Force reported 62 arrests (36 adult and 26 juvenile offenders) resulting in 171 charges, including 37 for grand theft auto, in its first five weeks of operation.

Local chess kids competing at Nationals this weekend in Orlando

More than a dozen of New Tampa’s best chess players will be competing this weekend in Orlando, as the United States Chess Federation holds its annual scholastic championships.

The 2015 National Scholastic K-12 Championships will be hosted by Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort beginning with the opening ceremony on Friday, December 4, 12:30 p.m, and concluding with the awards ceremony on Sunday, December 6, 5 p.m.

Most of the competitors attending are trained by longtime local coaches Mark Ritter and Tania Kranich-Ritter, who will be well represented in Orlando.

A dozen or so players from New Tampa and Wesley Chapel will be among the hundreds at Disney this weekend. They include:

Aarush Prasad (seventh-grader at Williams IB Middle School)
Ojas Kalia (7th, Williams)
Truman Hoang (freshman, Middleton High)
Shrey Gupta (8th, Williams IB)
Kelvin Ng (8th, John Long Middle School)
Parth Upadhyaya (5th, Lawton Chiles Elementary)
Melvin Uppgard (3rd, Chiles)
Lixin Zheng (8th, Louis Benito Middle School)
Teja Katipalli (4th, Harold H. Clark Elementary)
Jonathon Cotey (7th, Williams IB)
Khoi Cotey (5th, Richard F. Pride Elementary)
David Jin (4th, Pride)
Kevin Jin (5th, Pride)

The highest rated player in the group and the player considered to have the best chance at capturing a title is Hoang, one of the top players in the state.

Hoang, 15, is on the brink of earning Master status, boasting a 2176 rating (Masters are 2200). He is the second-highest-ranked among the 633 players from Florida competing. He is ranked in the top 100 in the country in the Under-16 age group.

“He puts in the most time and most effort at the board, it’s as simple as that,’’ said Ritter. “He loves the game and puts a lot of effort into it.”

While Hoang has a legitimate shot at a title, most of the players attend for the fun and the experience. The tournament has 569 teams registered from 39 states, and more than 1,570 players will compete in more than 60 classes, ranging from players rated anywhere from beginner to more than 2000.

“The experience is just tremendous,’’ said Ritter, who will stop by Saturday and go over the first and second round games with some of his students. “For one weekend, a gigantic hotel is taken over by chess players. Unfortunately, there is a prevalent attitude that being smart and good on an intellectual level is not cool. Suddenly, these kids are in an environment where everyone is doing the same thing they love to do.”

“It is inspirational,’’ said Kranich-Ritter, who has coached a handful of teams to nationals championships, including the 2006 Tampa Palms Elementary fifth-grade team. “You see so many children there — and you’re talking about more than 1,000 — and it’s the best in the country coming in to compete. You see that your sport, chess, that you love, is actually embraced by so many states and so many players. It’s inspirational to see so many of them under one roof. It’s the ultimate.”

Ritter and Kranich-Ritter have been running tournaments and clubs in the New Tampa area for 11 years, with club teams from around the area driving in to compete. Kranich-Ritter, who was the 1983 women’s state champion in New York, is the more serious one of the coaching combo, running local tournaments like a fine-tuned machine.

Ritter can sometimes be found comparing the talents of the 1971 New York Knicks or NBA Hall of Famers Bob Cousy and Bob Petit with, say, today’s Los Angeles Lakers and LeBron James with one of the player’s dads.

An internationally-rated chess master, Ritter is one of only five Level 5-rated coaches in the country, the highest level one can reach in chess. He has tutored five individual national champions, and runs open tournaments monthly, most at the Kumon Math & Reading Center of New Tampa. He also coaches after-school clubs at Pride and Chiles elementary schools, as well as an invitation-only Champions Club that has 28 members, including most of the students listed above.

Kranich-Ritter says she is looking forward to watching the players perform following this weekend. Often, she says, the big tournaments are an impetus for a player’s speedy progress.

“I believe that chess is the matrix of everything,’’ Kranich-Ritter says. “It’s abstract, more than mathematics, more than geometry and art and painting, but it is all of the above. The lessons you learn can be retrofitted to their professions one day. It is the blueprint for everything.”

Great American Teach-In another "Pride"-filled event

The Great American Teach-In (GATI) isn’t just a day Pride Elementary school principal Cindy Land uses to squeeze in a few speakers for students to listen to and gawk at, a day for kids to see the uniforms their parents wear to work or to pet a few animals.

For Land, it’s always been about something bigger.

“I think it excites the kids about their future careers,” Land said, “and it’s just a great way to get your community involved.”

That may explain why Pride rolls out the red carpet with a hot breakfast and a catered lunch for its GATI guests, which this year numbered more than 100.

From firemen to artists, television anchors to local politicians — with a good number of furry critters thrown in between — the Great American Teach-In appears to have been another success not only at Pride, but all around New Tampa.

At Chiles Elementary in Tampa Palms, the guests who came speak to students about their careers included photographers, cooks, physical therapists, hair stylists, authors, experts on Chinese culture and USF cross country head coach Dena Reif.

At Liberty Middle School, also in Tampa Palms, the USF Sun Dolls appeared, along with a comic book artist, commercial pilot and others.

At Pride, there seemed to be almost every job imaginable represented, including Hillsborough County Commissioner Ken Hagan, who has participated at Pride for 10 straight years.

“The 5th grade kids do really well with that, because government is what they are learning right now,’’ Land said.

There were also nurses, doctors, hot air balloons and the always popular animal rescues and certified therapy dogs.

Julie Van Acker, who works for Organicgirl, made healthy green smoothies for the kids in her class, while Kristen Gefre from Busch Gardens showed her kids a screech owl named Emmett and a baby american alligator named River.

The three-page handout with all of the guests and their teaching times was like a treasure map for the Pride students, who have been treated to a number of famous guests in recent years, including former Tampa Bay Bucs coach Tony Dungy.

At Pride, it’s getting bigger and bigger every year.

“It’s one of our largest events that we hold here at Pride,’’ Land said. “We contact everyone the prior spring, and any contacts we make throughout the year, we are consistently sending emails to them. We kind of eyeball the date we expect it to be and go from there. We love to have the community involved.”

10 Things you need to know about Wharton-Freedom Rivalry Night

The Wharton girls basketball team celebrates its first victory of the season.

1. The Wharton girls basketball team beat Freedom 70-49. I’m just going to let that one sit here for awhile. While you’re picking up your jaw, we’ll continue on, but we’ll come back to it, I promise.

Diamond was a Wildcats best friend Tuesday night.

2. Star of the night: Wharton 6-foot senior Diamond Wells, who came in with 25 points scored the entire season, lit up the Patriots for 27 and a bunch of rebounds and made 15-of-19 free throws. Oh, and she was a perfect 10-for-10 in the fourth quarter from the line. Wells’ previous high this season was 14 in the Wildcats’ last game, a loss to Venice, and her career-high was 15 in games against Plant her sophomore season and Tampa Bay Tech her freshman season. Asked if she knew her team was the only one from Wharton that was supposed to lose Tuesday night, she said “yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah.” Oh, and by the way, “School is going to be great” today, she added.

3. If a tree falls in the woods behind a field where one school beats its arch-rivals in four athletics events in one night, does that tree make a sound, and does it still count as a rivalry? It was dubbed Rivalry Night at Wharton, but the Wildcats swept Freedom in all four games — boys and girls soccer and boys and girls basketball — Tuesday evening. Maybe the pajamas the Wharton student section wore suggested to Freedom it was nighty-night time. Or maybe, Wharton just has the better teams for the moment. On this night, it certainly looked like that was the case.

4. For a Rivalry Night, the crowds were pretty, well, sparse. Oh, sure, they came out for the boys basketball game, but when that game ended with the Wildcats ekeing out a 47-44 victory, the gym emptied out. The girls game deserved better, as it turned out, but let’s be honest, everyone thought that game would be a Freedom rout. I counted barely 30 at the soccer games. Lopsided affairs can kill a rivalry, and Wharton has definitely had the upper hand in most of the sports in recent years, but you would still expect a little more sizzle in the bleachers.

5. So back to this Wharton girls basketball thing. The Wildcats just whipped Freedom from start to finish. They were much bigger than the Patriots, killed them inside and never let up, outscoring Freedom 23-9 in the fourth quarter to put an exclamation mark on the win, which I think you could argue at least was the biggest of coach Chad Reed’s career since beating Plant to win the district title in 2009.

It was pretty stunning, considering the Wildcats were 0-6 this season and had lost half of those games by at least 25 points and hadn’t beaten Freedom since 2009 and had lost the last five by 30 points or more and, well, we could go on and on. Because we’re not done. We’ll be back to the girls hoopsters in a bit.

6. Wharton boys basketball coach Tommy Tonelli said in the preseason he thought Evan Trice would be one of the best point guards in Tampa Bay. He was pretty darned good Tuesday night. The senior scored a game-high 17 points, including 11 in the first half as the Wildcats built a lead they would carry into the final period.

7. Wharton’s Josiah Crawford, who scored six points, said there was some talk at practice this week about making sure the Wildcats remained the top hoops program in New Tampa. Wharton has won 12 of the last 14 meetings between the teams going back to 2005, and both Freedom victories were by a combined three points (39-38 in 2014 and 74-72 in 2008). “We talked about how we’re big brother and they are little brother,” he said. “But really it’s about who is the big dog. Tonight we were the bigger dog.”

8. Tuesday’s 4-0 victory over Freedom was the Wharton girls soccer team’s fourth straight game without a loss and third straight win. The Wildcats had a number of breakaways against Freedom, which played with its defenders up in a futile effort to catch Wharton offsides, and could have scored more.

However, two goals from sophomore Alisha Deschenes (her fourth and fifth of the season) and goals from Alabama-signee Taylor Hubbard (her team-leading sixth) and sophomore Delaney Rowan, her scored her first of the season, were plenty.

9. The boys soccer team sandwiched a Freedom goal with scores from juniors Clifford Adjei (to make it 1-0) and Donovan Quigley, with Quigley’s providing the winning margin in a 2-1 victory. Adjei leads the Wildcats with six goals, and Quigley is second with three, and don’t look now but Wharton has won two straight after a three-match losing streak.

10. Back to the night’s heroes. Senior Lauren Wall scored 12 of her 16 points in the first half for the girls basketballers, and junior Sabrena Eye scored 10 of her 12 in the first half, but it was the last basket of the game that drew the biggest ovation. With her teammates on the edge of their seats living and dying with each of her shots, freshman Brianna Boney finally made the first basket of her high school career when she grabbed a rebound off her own miss in the paint and put it in off the glass for two. Bravo, Brianna.

Neighborhood News assistant editor John C. Cotey can be reached at john@ntneighborhoodnews.com

Former Freedom High XC coach charged with sex with student

Former Freedom High track and girls cross country coach Dwight Lamont Smith was booked into the Hillsborough County jail Monday night on sexual assault charges after being accused of having sex with a student on trips to Gainesville and Titusville on consecutive weekends.

Smith, 48 and a resident of Wesley Chapel, faces charges of sexual assault by a custodian and sexual battery of a person aged 12-18. His bond was set at $150,000.

According to the Gainesville Police Deportment report, Smith and his cross country team were in Gainesville Sept. 18 for a meet and staying overnight. At dinner, Smith provided a 17-year-old girl, a student at Freedom and member of the track team, with vodka and orange juice and made her drink it, according to the report. He also gave her a key to his hotel room so she could receive “counseling”. When the girl showed up at his room, he gave her more alcohol until she became intoxicated, and then had sex with her around 7 p.m.

Smith left the room to meet some school alumni for dinner, and told the girl to stay in the room. She did not stay, however. Smith texted the girl later that night after dinner, telling her to return to the room. When the girl entered the room, Smith was naked. He then provided more alcohol to the girl, and they had sex again around 11 p.m.

The following weekend, the two again had sex in a hotel room in Titusville, where the team was competing in another meet.

According to a Tampa Police Department report, on Nov. 11, Smith showed up at her house in a red car, unannounced. Her parents were not home, and he told her he missed her and wanted to come in and have sex. But after seeing her two cats sitting in the window of the house, he said he could not go in because he was allergic to cats. Instead, they sat in her car and kissed as he fondled her. She said she did not want to have sex in the car, and told him she was on her period, so he left.

She then realized that their relationship was wrong, the report states, and reported it to the Freedom principal Kevin Stephenson on Nov. 12, who immediately took her to the School Resource Officer.

Smith, who was a teacher’s assistant in the school’s Exceptional Student Education program, was escorted out of school and has been fired.