By Adam Emerson and Rich Shopes
The Tampa Tribune
TAMPA, Fla. — The day before he shot and killed his estranged wife and two others, Jorge Orlando Bello Garcia visited his father and told him he wanted to get away.
“I don’t like living anymore in Tampa,” Celso Orlando Bello said his son told him Friday.
Sick from diabetes and out of work, Jorge Bello wanted to move back to California, where he had lived before he married his wife, Gina Marie Lamantia.
The conversation otherwise went no differently from the twice-weekly visits Celso Bello shared with his son. Before he left Friday, though, Jorge Bello told his father he loved his children.
After that, his father said, “Take care of yourself.”
The next day, his son, who’s also known as George Bello, armed himself with a .45-caliber handgun and drove to the Carrollwood rental home he shared with his wife until a month ago.
Deputies say Bello, 54, entered through an open garage door and went to an enclosed back porch. There he found his wife, 44, and two others, a family friend and a Hillsborough County fire captain.
He shot and killed them all.
When authorities stopped him minutes later in his red Ford pickup, Bello opened fire and seriously wounded two deputies. The rampage ended after another deputy shot Bello in the head.
Deputy Arturo “Art” Lence, 53, was shot to the torso. He was in fair condition Sunday at St. Joseph’s Hospital. A second deputy, Raymond Wilson, 55, who was shot in the left forearm, was treated at St. Joseph’s and released Saturday afternoon.
On Sunday, which would have been the Bellos’ 14th wedding anniversary, friends and family gathered to try to make sense of what happened.
Celso Bello said he had no answers.
A Family ‘Lost Their Daughter’
He said his son had been separated from his wife for nearly six months and had lost 30 pounds in that time.
Bello’s illness prevented him from working as a truck driver, so he cleaned offices part-time, his father said. The home he owned on Paris Street in Town ‘N Country went into foreclosure.
Celso Bello choked back tears in his home off West Waters Avenue, which was filled with photos of his son and daughter-in-law with their children in happier times.
“Now a family has lost their daughter,” he said. “And I lost my son.”
He said the children, Joey, 13, and Frank, 6, are with Lamantia-Bello’s parents, who live in northwest Tampa. At least eight cars were parked in the home’s driveway, and family and friends walked somberly about the manicured lawn. A woman said the family didn’t want to speak to a reporter.
Lamantia-Bello was killed along with her friend, Regina Coffaro, 44, and Chris Artigas, a 45-year-old captain with Hillsborough County Fire Rescue.
Coffaro’s aunt, Ida Noguez, 81, of West Tampa, said she has no idea why her niece, who was studying to become a masseuse, was visiting Lamantia-Bello, although the two were friends. Noguez said she and her niece hadn’t spoken for a while.
“We’re just shocked. We’re all shocked,” she said. “This is a case where everybody got killed. Nobody could tell the story.”
Coffaro had three daughters, including one in college.
Artigas left three children as well. On Sunday, family and friends gathered at the northwest Tampa home of Chris and Judy Artigas. Through a friend, the family declined to comment.
At Fire Station No. 35 on Countryway Boulevard in Westchase, where Artigas was assigned, the flag flew at half-staff. Firefighters said they were instructed not to comment about their friend and co-worker.
Capt. Bruce Delk, a spokesman for Hillsborough County Fire Rescue, said Sunday no plans had been made for a memorial service but one likely will be planned this week.
“I’m sure we’ll have something official,” he said.
“This was pretty much about family today.”
Many Questions, Few Answers
For Celso Bello, Sunday was a day for answering calls from family on his red rotary telephone. Each conversation was short. He knew little of what led to the chaos that ensued swiftly Saturday morning.
After his son sped away from the rental home where he confronted his wife, neighbors called 911. Deputies stopped his pickup at Linebaugh Avenue and Henderson Road and ordered him out.
Bello opened a rear window and fired, hitting Lence and Wilson. Wilson took cover in a ditch, but Bello left his truck to try to wrestle away Wilson’s gun in what a sheriff’s spokesman described as a “life-and-death struggle.”
Bello’s 83-year-old father said he doesn’t know what he’ll do next.
When his son was 7, Celso Bello took his family from their native Havana and came to Miami. After a couple of years, he moved the family to Grand Rapids, Mich., where he worked as a carpenter.
After another two years, they moved to California, where Bello found work as a carpenter and his son graduated from high school. The family then moved back to Florida and settled in Tampa, where George Bello attended Hillsborough Community College.
Before he received a degree, George Bello got a job as a truck driver and returned to California. He stayed there about five years, his father said, and met Lamantia, who was born in Maryland.
The couple married in Tampa on June 8, 1994. Not long after, their first son was born.
Celso Bello said he hopes that, “in the future, I can have good relations with Gina’s father and mother.”
If that’s possible, he said, he can still have a good relationship with his grandchildren. He has five others from his two daughters.
Copyright 2008 The Tampa Tribune