Recordings showed that a survivor pleaded with a 911 operator to send help as she prayed.
By Sara Kennedy, Associated Press
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - A customer survived a gunman’s deadly rampage inside a Radio Shack store by dropping to the ground and then prayed aloud as the moans of his victims echoed around her, tapes of her call to 911 showed Friday.
Leellette D. Rutherford was inside the store Thursday evening when University of South Florida psychology major Justin Michael Cudar walked in and began firing without warning, killing a customer and a clerk and severely wounding another employee.
A terrified Rutherford pleaded with the 911 operator to send help as she prayed aloud.
“Please, God, there are people dying here,” Rutherford, 55, told the operator. “There’s blood all over the place.”
When the operator asked about the moaning voices in the background, Rutherford told him it was the people who had been shot. She told the operator that she thought the gunman and the others were “just fooling around” only to look up and see the blood-splattered store.
“Please Jesus, they are dying, please hurry,” she begged. “Please hurry, they are dying right in front of me.”
The tape of the dramatic emergency call was released as authorities and families struggled to understand Cudar’s motive.
Police said Cudar, 25, may have undergone treatment for paranoia and was being investigated in a road rage incident earlier in the day at the time of the shooting.
His mother last saw him several hours before the shooting when he left their St. Petersburg home and told her he was “going to do some target practice,” St. Petersburg Police Sgt. Mike Puetz said.
APPEARS RANDOM
There is no known connection between Cudar and the Radio Shack store at the Gateway Market Center or any of the employees, police said. Cudar had purchased the .40-caliber Glock handgun legally Nov. 5.
“It appears to be a random and senseless act at this time,” police spokesman Bill Proffitt said.
Killed were customer Kenneth Powell, 23, and store clerk Joana Cruz, 19. Another clerk, James Dolan, 30, was in critical condition Friday at Bayfront Medical Center. Cudar was found dead in the store from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Rutherford and Radio Shack employee Wesley Wight, 52, were not shot.
Puetz said Rutherford had dropped to the ground in the fetal position when Cudar, who was standing behind her, started shooting. He said she does not know if he thought she had been hit and moved on to shooting others.
The shooting lasted just 10 to 15 seconds, police said. Seven shots were fired from Cudar’s gun, leaving four in the weapon and he had a second clip of ammunition with 11 rounds.
The shooting occurred at about 6:45 p.m. in a busy shopping center that also includes a grocery store.
Pinellas County sheriff’s officials said Friday they had been trying to contact Cudar about an incident earlier Thursday in which he was believed to have assaulted two motorists when the shooting occurred.
Marianne Pasha, a spokeswoman for the sheriff’s office, said deputies had been talking to Cudar’s mother during the day and were trying to track him down when the shooting occurred.
“His mother said her son had anger-management issues,” Pasha said Friday. “I am not sure anyone will know what set him off.”
Deputies began searching for Cudar after a man driving his car exchanged hostile glances with two people in a pickup truck. At an intersection, the man got out and threw a steering-wheel locking device through the left rear passenger window.
The victims were so frightened they fled and hid behind a nearby drug store while they called for help, Pasha said. A witness spotted Cudar’s tag number.
CONTACTED MOTHER
Deputies spoke before the shooting to his mother, Barbara Cudar, who told them her son had “mental issues.” Deputies never talked directly to Cudar, Pasha said.
“We knew who he was, we had contact with his mother and she had telephone contact with him,” Pasha said. “The last thing our deputy knew was Justin was coming back to his house and they were going to meet.”
St. Petersburg police said Cudar was involved in a 2003 incident in which he reportedly slugged a bicyclist after a confrontation. No charges were pressed because the victim was moving out of state.
Barbara Cudar did not answer her door Friday. Michelle Luciano, who lived next door the Cudars for a decade in a quiet, modest northeast St. Petersburg neighborhood, said Justin Cudar never showed any outward signs of trouble.
“He was a good kid,” Luciano said. “It’s just shocking.”
Bill Hughes, who identified himself as Justin Cudar’s cousin, told WFLA television he had no idea what might have caused the shooting. Hughes went to the scene of the shooting Friday and wept as he answered a reporter’s questions.
“What made him do that? I feel sorry for my whole family and the families of the people involved,” Hughes said. “I just want you to know that Justin was a good boy.”
Powell was the father of two young sons, said his uncle, the Rev. Louis Murphy, pastor of the Mount Zion Progressive Missionary Baptist Church, a prominent church in St. Petersburg. Cruz lived with her mother at a nearby apartment complex after graduating last year from high school.
“Kenny was a quiet person. He was very easy-going,” Murphy said of his nephew. “He was a very, very private person, somewhat of an introvert. You had to squeeze him to get a word out of him.”
Murphy said he believed his nephew worked at a Publix grocery store in the same shopping center, and said the it was simply a matter of his nephew being “in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“He didn’t have any really big dreams, he just wanted to enjoy life,” Murphy said. “I know he was a real good father to his boys.”