By Anastasia Dawson
Tampa Tribune
TAMPA, Fla. — A Tampa police officer is under investigation after police said he ran over a man while on duty last month.
The man, William Dale McIntire, 60, died, though police said they do not yet know if he died because he was struck by the officer’s car.
Tampa police initially called the June 28 incident a hit and run. On Thursday, investigators said forensic evidence on an officer’s unmarked police car matched McIntire’s DNA.
William McIntire had been married to high school sweetheart Belinda McIntire for 39 years and had three sons, a daughter and two young grandchildren.
McIntire’s son, Bradley McIntire, 30, met with new Tampa Police Chief Eric Ward on Thursday to discuss his father’s death.
Police said the undercover officer was driving his unmarked vehicle on June 28 at about 11:30 p.m. when McIntire was struck and killed around the intersection of N. 40th Street and E. Flora Street. Police responded to a call about a hit and run and found McIntire dead in the street.
He was minutes from his home in a well-lit part of the street in front of a bus stop. His family has set up a memorial with pictures and candles where he died.
Witnesses told investigators McIntire was lying in the middle of E. Flora Street when a dark-colored SUV drove by at a high rate of speed, ran him over and continued driving, police said.
Bradley McIntire said police told him the plain-clothes officer was responding to a robbery call and didn’t know he had hit someone. He said blood and remains were found under the officer’s SUV. His father’s death will be “pursued in a different way,” he said.
“All I have is speculation and a headache,” Bradley McIntire said. “I just have a lot of uncertainty about everything. You hear it’s a hit and run and you think automatically it was a citizen, not a law enforcement officer that works diligently and keeps you safe. I can’t help but doubt everything. It’s so hard.”
Tampa police spokeswoman Andrea Davis would not reveal the name of the officer but said the State Attorney’s office and top officials from the Tampa Police Department, including new chief of police Eric Ward, are “intimately and critically involved” in the investigation. The department is conducting both a criminal and an internal affairs investigation.
Davis would not reveal details about how police discovered the officer had run over the man, saying the case is still under investigation.
“We have been keeping the family informed of everything we know because we feel it’s the right thing to do. We let them know right away what we discovered,” Davis said. “The detectives investigating this case determined it was possible last week, and until yesterday it was just a theory.”
The officer has been placed on administrative desk duty while the investigation is underway, a standard procedure.
McIntire’s family was gathered at his home Thursday to look through old pictures and try to make sense of their loss.
His father might have been walking home from a nearby bar when he fell into the street, Bradley McIntire said. One night in 2010, McIntire was found passed out drunk on the same part of N. 40th Street and was taken to a hospital by fire fighters, according to a police report.
He was a kind, hard-working man who loved his family and would buy his Cuban-Italian wife yellow rice even though he didn’t like it, said his wife, Belinda McIntire. They met when she was 16 and were married by 18. McIntire was an Army veteran and spent years building fences.
“He liked working with his hands,” Bradley McIntire said.
Belinda said she fell asleep around midnight the night her husband died and woke up three hours later to sheriff’s deputies in her bedroom.
It was Sunday, and gospel services were playing on the TV.
“I know he’s up in heaven, happy with his mom and dad,” Belinda McIntire said. “He was so good looking.”
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