Hank Earl Carr began a long day of carnage carrying his dying 4-year-old stepson into a Tampa fire station, the boy's face blown off by a high-powered rifle.
Accused of lying about the Tuesday morning shooting, Carr slipped from handcuffs and fatally shot two officers taking him to police headquarters. He hijacked a truck and fled, killed a rookie state trooper who tried to stop him, wounded a truck driver and took a gas station clerk hostage.More than 170 law officers surrounded the Shell station near this city about 50 miles north of Tampa. Carr released the female clerk unharmed after a nearly four-hour standoff, then put a bullet in his head as a SWAT team closed in, police said.
"I don't want to go to prison," Carr told a radio station early in the standoff. "I don't want to eat the food. I don't want to live with the people. I just don't want to go to prison. I don't want to go."
Tuesday night, the flag flew at half-staff at Tampa police headquarters, and a makeshift memorial of flowers and notes grew at the downtown intersection where the respected and well-liked detectives died.
Police records show Carr, 30, had a criminal record dating back to 1986 that included burglary, domestic violence, assault, grand larceny, possession of cocaine and resisting an officer with violence.
"He would beat me constantly," said Evelyn Sacks, his ex-girlfriend in Ohio and mother of two children to Carr. "I'm glad he's dead. Live like that, die like that."
The ordeal started shortly after 10 a.m., when Carr - then identifying himself as Joseph Lee Bennett - and his wife carried 4-year-old Joseph into a neighborhood fire station, police said.
They said the boy had been dragging the rifle behind him when they yelled at him to put it down and it went off. He fled when told the boy died, was caught and changed his story when questioned, police said. Then the two detectives cuffed him and headed for headquarters.
WFLA broadcast an interview with Carr, who called the radio station and said he shot the two officers in the car after they refused to listen to his explanation of how his stepson died of a gunshot wound.
He said the boy's death was an accident.