By Stephen Thompson
Tampa Tribune
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — The two undercover detectives were driving by when they noticed three teens on bicycles acting oddly outside a gas station Monday evening.
As members of the St. Petersburg Police Department’s special investigations unit, they had to have been aware of the city’s seemingly endless stream of convenience store robberies, some of which ended with clerks or owners shot.
As the plainclothes detectives watched about 10:20 p.m., two of the teens entered the Suncoast Exxon gas station, 3061 First Ave. N., and, their faces concealed, robbed the business at gunpoint.
Neither of the two clerks -- nor a customer -- was shot, but within seconds, one of the detectives was.
Outside, the detective either grabbed one of the teens, who was watching the bikes, or he confronted the 18-year-old who had just robbed the gas station, and the 18-year-old opened fire, police said.
The 41-year-old detective -- whom Police Chief Chuck Harmon described as a stellar officer and a married father -- was shot at least four times. He was in serious but stable condition at Bayfront Medical Center on Tuesday.
This was the second time he was involved in a shooting. In 1994 while working undercover, he wounded a homeless man who had a toy gun and tried to rob him and a partner. The officer was cleared.
His identity is not being released by the Tribune because he is undercover.
Harmon said it was too early to say whether the people arrested Monday night were involved in previous convenience store robberies.
Family members of one of the teens, however, questioned the detectives’ actions.
The 18-year-old accused of shooting the officer has been identified as James Seay of Gulfport. He was being held without bail at the Pinellas County Jail on charges of attempted murder of a police officer and armed robbery.
The other teens, Shaheed Wright, 16, and Desmond Creary, 17, both of St. Petersburg, were arrested and charged in the robbery and with attempted murder of an officer.
After the robbery, Seay and Wright ran back to their bicycles, where Creary was waiting, police said. In one account provided by police, the detective grabbed Creary. That’s when Seay approached the detective and shot several rounds from a midsize-caliber handgun, striking the officer several times in the upper and lower body, police spokesman Bill Proffitt said Tuesday morning.
The detective returned fire; none of the teens was struck.
Seay’s jail affidavit, however, states that Seay shot the undercover officer when the detective confronted him and told him to halt.
After the shooting, the three teens ran but quickly were caught. A police dog attacked Seay as he ran, but the resulting wound was described as minor by police.
Seay’s family came to his defense.
“I know one thing,” said the Rev. Daryl Seay, his uncle. “He wasn’t raised like that.”
“He’s not that type of person at all,” said Seay’s brother, Ferrell Davis. Davis showed up at a news conference the chief gave at the police department’s training building but was escorted out.
Davis said James Seay recently had been robbed twice and might have been protecting himself or an acquaintance.
“The way they’re blasting him is ridiculous,” Kimberly Davis, James Seay’s sister. “If you were dressed undercover -- they are not in uniform -- and you grab my arm, I’m going to defend myself, too.”
The Seay family wondered aloud about the police department’s version of events. They wondered why the police dog was loosed on him and why the undercover detectives did not stop the teens before they robbed the gas station.
“I think it’s just as much their fault as it is the boys,” the Rev. Seay said of the officers.
Creary’s mother, Renee, was dumbfounded. “I’m hearing it, but I’m just not believing,” the certified nursing assistant said of the charges.
Copyright 2009 Tampa Tribune