By Keith Morelli
The Tampa Tribune
TAMPA, Fla. — The man shot by a Florida Highway Patrol trooper in a Pinellas Park cemetery early Monday morning is from Tampa and is the owner of the cemetery, the highway patrol, relatives and property records confirmed Tuesday.
Clifford F. Work, 48, owns Royal Palms Cemetery on Gandy Boulevard and likely was there preparing for a burial, said his uncle, Ernie Collins, speaking from Mt. Vernon, Ill.
Law enforcement authorities have released few details of the incident.
Capt. Nancy Rasmussen said trooper Daniel Cole, a 13-year veteran of the department, was tracking a LoJack signal emanating from a stolen vehicle. The signal led Cole to the garage area in the back of the cemetery.
There, she said, Cole encountered “an armed subject and fired upon the subject.”
Though the shooting happened early Monday, it wasn’t until late Tuesday that the highway patrol confirmed Work was the man who had been shot.
Rasmussen said the shooting is part of an active investigation, the details of which would not immediately be released.
“It’s Cliff,” Collins said. “My nephew’s the guy. His mom called my wife and told her he had been shot. He’s in the hospital. We know it’s him.”
But that’s about all they know, he said, and relatives are trying to get answers.
“I’d like to know why it happened,” Collins said. “I don’t think Cliff would be that stupid. He’s a college graduate; he’s worked hard all his life. If a man in uniform says drop your weapon ... he’s going to do it.”
Initial law enforcement reports identified Work as a “suspect,” but a later statement from the highway patrol called him a “subject.”
Cole was not injured.
Florida Department of Law Enforcement spokesman Keith Kameg confirmed his agency is investigating the shooting but declined to release any details on Tuesday.
Injuries to Work do not appear to be life-threatening, Collins said.
According to the Pinellas County Property Appraiser’s Office, the cemetery is owned by Work & Son-Osiris Inc., a company incorporated by Work’s father, Frank, and run out of the family home in Cory Lake Isles in New Tampa, records show.
Attempts to reach his immediate family on Tuesday were unsuccessful. Collins said Work has two teenage children.
“He had every right to be there,” Collins said. “He was coming out of the building; they called him a suspect; well, what (is) he suspected of? I don’t really know.”
If there was a funeral planned Monday, Work might have been there getting the gravesite ready, Collins said.
He said his nephew probably was armed. “If it was dark, he might have reached for his weapon,” thinking he was being robbed by a gunman telling him to raise his hands, Collins said.
“There are a lot of things we don’t know,” he said.
Cole was investigated last year after he used a stun gun in September on a 20-year-old woman who fell after being stunned, hit her head on the pavement and ended up in a coma. He was placed on administrative leave but later cleared.
In 2000, Cole was named Pinellas County Trooper of the Year.
Copyright 2012 The Tribune Co.