Thread: Britons shot in Florida killed as part of 'gang initiation'

Britons shot in Florida killed as part of 'gang initiation'

Two British friends shot dead on a crime-ridden American housing estate were ambushed and murdered, possibly as part of a gang initiation.

Link to this video http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... dents.html

By Paul Thompson, in Florida and Nick Britten 10:14PM BST 18 Apr 2011

James Cooper, 25, and James Kouzaris, 24, were in Florida when they were killed at 3am in a gangland area rarely visited by tourists.

They apparently accepted a lift from someone they met in a bar, thinking they were being driven home.



A 16 year-old, named locally as Shawn Tyson (left), was charged with their murder. It emerged yesterday that he was freed by a judge last week despite being arrested over an armed robbery.

The bodies of Mr Cooper, a tennis coach who once played Andy Murray, and Mr Kouzaris were found riddled with bullets on a one-way street in the estate, known for drug dealing and gang activity. Police are investigating the theory that the pair spent the night bar hopping in Sarasota.

Officers suspect they believed they were being driven the 12 miles to the resort of Longboat Key.

Instead, they were taken to Newtown, Sarasota, where they were confronted by a gang of masked men.

Police sources said both men were running away when they were shot. Their bodies were found 50ft apart. They still had money on them and police found no evidence to suggest they had been wanting to buy drugs.

Sarasota police chief Mikel Hollaway said detectives had their suspicions but it would be unfair to state them. He said he believed the victims were there of their own volition.

Captain Paul Sutton said police were looking at the possibility of more arrests. He said: “More than one person ran when shots were fired.â€

The final hours of their lives: Last photos of the two British tourists in a Florida bar... before they were shot in the back in gang ghetto

By Paul Thompson and Michael Seamark
Last updated at 9:13 AM on 19th April 2011
149 Comments

These are the last pictures taken of two British holidaymakers the day before they were brutally murdered in a Florida backstreet.

Pictured enjoying themselves in a bar, university friends James Cooper and James Kouzaris appeared to be having a good time as they enjoyed a three-week holiday in Longboat Key.

But the two men were then killed after they were shot in the back as they tried to run away in a run-down suburb of Sarasota, 12 miles from their holiday resort.



The final night out: James Cooper makes a gesture with his hands at a bar just hours before he was murdered in Sarasota in Florida


The final picture: James Kouzaris on Saturday evening shortly before he was gunned down in the notorious district of Newton

It comes after it was revealed the 16-year-old charged with murdering the two Britons was freed by a judge two weeks ago after he was arrested over an armed robbery.

Shawn Tyson, who allegedly shot Mr Cooper and Mr Kouzaris, was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon following that incident.



However as it was his first offence he was released from custody while police investigated the case.

He will now be charged as an adult and, if convicted of first-degree murder of the two Britons on Saturday evening, could face the death penalty.

Police investigators were last night trying to piece together how the two university friends were murdered in a gang-ridden neighbourhood in the city of Sarasota.

U.S. officers were said to be mystified that the two middle-class visitors were in the Newton district.

One theory, however, is that they may have accepted the offer of a lift back to their upmarket resort 12 miles away, only to find themselves being set up for a robbery.

The pair were fleeing for their lives when they were shot ‘multiple times’ in the back with a handgun at 3am.

They were left to die in a run-down housing project infamous for drug-dealing and violent gang activity. Their bodies were found 50ft apart surrounded by at least 20 bullet cases.

It was understood that the weapon allegedly used by Tyson was a TEC-9, a semi-automatic handgun.

Mr Cooper, 25, a tennis coach who once played Andy Murray, and Mr Kouzaris, 24, a town planner and leading amateur rugby player, met while studying at Sheffield University.

They had arrived in Florida last week in time to celebrate Mr Cooper’s 25th birthday on Wednesday.

They had planned to stay for three weeks with his parents Stanley and Sandra at their £1,200-a-week rented condominium in Longboat Key, an island resort renowned for its pristine white sandy beaches.


Gunned down: James Kouzaris, 24, from Northampton (right) and James Cooper, 25, from Warwickshire, were murdered during a holiday in Florida with family and friends


Best buddies: James Kouzaris, right, and James Cooper became friends after meeting at university. Police don't understand what they were doing in such a dangerous area at 3am


'RIP to a legend': Tributes said James Kouzaris, drinking beer with a friend, left, 'lived every day to the fullest'

On Friday night, the two men went bar-hopping in downtown Sarasota, a beach city familiar to countless Britons who have headed to Florida for winter sun.

Police suspect they were driven from the bar area to Newtown because there was no sign of a hire car in the area, which last year accounted for 43 per cent of Sarasota’s armed robberies and 83 per cent of its murders.

At the peak of a recent crime wave, violence was so bad many residents stopped wearing jewellery in public for fear of being robbed.

Mr Cooper had a girlfriend in Florida, 31-year-old Gina Cross. The couple had kept in constant touch since meeting two years ago and spent Thursday night together.

‘I don’t know how they ended up where they were found,’ she said. ‘It’s a very bad neighbourhood – somewhere I would not even drive.

‘So why they were there is the big question on everyone’s mind.’

Detectives say they have found no evidence to suggest that the pair had been trying to buy drugs.

Although cash was found on the Britons’ bodies, sources in the Newtown neighbourhood said they had been lured into an ambush by masked gunmen.


Sonja Seymour, who lives on the street where the men were found in the early hours of Saturday, said: ‘I heard that when they arrived here there were already some people waiting for them. They were wearing masks.

‘The men ran away and they were shot. I saw one of them lying in the street on his back with his arms outstretched.

‘The other was across the road and lying on his back. They were not moving.

‘The ambulance arrived and tried to work on the two men but they couldn’t do anything. They were covered up and taken away and the police put up all the yellow tape.’

Captain Paul Sutton, of Sarasota police, said: ‘We are still investigating why they would have been in this area. It would be wrong to say they were buying drugs as no drugs paraphernalia were found on them.


Murder scene: James Cooper and James Kouzaris were found dead on this one way street which is off the usual tourist trail

‘It is very unusual to find tourists or visitors in this area. It is a residential neighbourhood with no shops and no bars. We do not know what brought them here at 3am.

‘This is not an area that you would expect tourists from England to venture into. This is a low-income area which has had its problems with crime.’ At Longboat Key last night, a family friend said that 58-year-old Stanley Cooper, a retired BBC executive, and his 52-year-old wife were ‘too distraught’ to speak about their only child’s death.

‘They are both hysterical and are still just coming to terms with what has happened.’

Back in England James Cooper’s grandfather Desmond Walton, 79, said the family rented a property in Florida every year. ‘It is like a very bad film, a complete nightmare. We know very little about what happened.

‘They went out in Florida on Friday evening as young men do – James only celebrated his birthday on the 13th, but they didn’t come back.


Well-travelled: Mr Kouzaris is believed to have taught English while living in Taiwan


Fun-loving: James Kouzaris with pictures from his round-the-world holiday posted on Facebook

‘As it was getting late his mother rang his mobile and got no answer. She carried on ringing until the early hours and eventually a policeman answered it – they had picked up his mobile.

‘They came to get Sandra and his dad and took them down to the police station, and only then did they tell them that boys had been shot and killed.

‘Sandra is shattered, as are we.’

In a brief statement released through Northamptonshire Police, Mr Kouzaris’s family said: ‘James was a wonderful son.

‘We loved him so much and we can’t believe he has gone.We are absolutely devastated and in a state of complete shock.’


Murder victim James Cooper's family home near Warwick, with a Jaguar and a 4x4 in the driveway

His sister Emily added in a tribute on Facebook: ‘My brother was a legend and he will be missed and loved by many, many people.’

Mr Kouzaris’s aunt, Carole Kouzaris, of Syston, Leicestershire, said: ‘We’ve got no idea what James and his friend would have been doing in that part of the city at that time of night.

‘Nobody knows. They’re the only ones that know that, and sadly they won’t be able to tell us now.’

An uncle, Michael Kouzaris, 63, from Dartford, Kent, described his nephew as ‘one in a million’.

He added: ‘James was a real family guy, very caring and he loved to travel.

‘He would go abroad a fair bit as I think he wanted to get it all out of his system before he settled down. He was ambitious and liked to see the world and to broaden his perspective and understanding of different places.’

The tennis prodigy and the friend who lived to travel


Talented: James Cooper was a county level tennis player who later became a coach and said his claim to fame was that he once took on Andy Murray

James Cooper was a talented tennis player whose main claim to fame was playing Andy Murray at the age of 14.

He had spent Thursday evening with an American woman he met when he travelled to Florida with Mr Kouzaris two years ago.

Gina Cross, 31, from Sarasota, said: ‘He was by no means my boyfriend because he lived so far away, but you could say we were casual dating. It was a friendship that had the potential to go a lot further.

‘James kept in touch with me for two years. He was unlike anybody I had ever met before – he was special.

‘I’m heartbroken, I’ve spent all week telling my friends what a great guy James is and how he is a gentleman.’

Miss Cross had been hoping to introduce Mr Cooper to her friends on Saturday evening, hours after he was gunned down.

Mr Cooper lived with his parents, Stanley, 58, and Sandra, 52, in a £850,000 converted barn in Hampton Lucy, outside Warwick. The couple are also both keen tennis players.

Although a professional career proved beyond their son, he had stayed in the game, playing at county level for Warwickshire.

Since graduating in management from Sheffield two years ago, he worked as a tennis coach for a company called Inspire2Coach, which runs courses at Warwick University and other venues around the Midlands. Mr Cooper had recently been promoted to a head coach role.

He attended Kenilworth School in the town where he grew up and was a season-ticket holder at Coventry City football club, attending games with his father, who was said to have taken early retirement from the BBC.

A keen traveller, he enjoyed a trip to Australia in January last year, visiting the Australian Open tennis tournament.

His grandfather Desmond Walton, 79, from Southgate, North London, said he was a ‘good boy’ and said the pair were more like ‘mates than granddad and grandson’.


Keen traveller: Mr Cooper can be seen taking a boat trip during a trip to Australia last year, where he also visited the Australian Open tennis tournament

‘Whenever James called me he would always finish off by saying ‘I love you Granddad’. That’s the sort of boy he was. He wouldn’t hurt a fly.’

James Roe, who was James Cooper’s doubles partner at Kenilworth Tennis Club, said ‘People still asked him about the day he played Andy Murray.

‘I’ve known him since he was 14. He was a very good junior and represented Warwickshire and played in all the local leagues.

‘I was his doubles partner from 2003 to 2009 when we won the club championships. Tennis was his whole life.’


James Kouzaris was described as a ‘gregarious’ free spirit.

Since leaving the University of Sheffield with a masters degree in town planning in 2008, he fitted work around his major passion – travelling.

He had returned only a fortnight ago from a three-month journey through Latin America, visiting Ecuador, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Bolivia. He is thought to have spent a week with his parents, Hazel and Peter, both 52, at their home in Northampton, before flying out to Miami for the ill-fated three-week break with his friend.


James Kouzaris lived in Taiwan but had spent months touring South America before meeting up with his friend

Mr Kouzaris was signed up to Northamptonshire County Council’s register of temporary workers and helped across a variety of departments. He had been due to return to the authority to fill a position in the finance department later this month.

Born in Northampton, he attended the 470-year-old Northampton School for Boys, captaining his year group at rugby for three years.

In 2002 he led the school rugby team on its tour of Australia and New Zealand. He also captained a team at Old Northamptonians Rugby Club from the age of nine until he left for university and taught English as a foreign language on his travels while in Taiwan.


Holiday: An image posted on Mr Kouzaris' Facebook page show him in a bar

Shortly before he flew home from his travels last month, he had written on Facebook that he was heading ‘back to normality soon’.

In a reference to their forthcoming Florida break, James Cooper replied: ‘U have got to be kiddin, ur back a week and then we go off to America.’

Relatives said James Kouzaris had been planning to settle down in London, where he had a girlfriend, but had talked of emigrating to Australia.

Deadly side of the Sunshine State
By HUGH HUNTER

As a destination long favoured by British tourists, Florida conjures up a wealth of enticing images: sun-drenched beaches, long-drives along coastal highways with breathtaking views, magnificent theme parks such as Disneyland, and wonderful food to suit every budget.

But there is another Florida, a world away from this travellers’ paradise. The peninsula state also has a far darker, seamier, more violent side, where only naive or criminal visitors dare to tread.

The dangers of this environment were graphically exposed by the fatal shooting of two Britons. What has so perplexed the Florida police about this double murder is that few tourists visit the deprived neighbourhood where they were killed, particularly because there are no nightclubs or restaurants.


Poverty: People sit on porches outside their homes in Florida, where the contrast between rich and poor is one of the biggest in the western world

This tragic case shows just how risky it can be to stray into the wrong neighbourhood in Florida. That is certainly what I discovered during my spell between 1998 and 2006 as the British Consul in Orlando, one of the most popular places for visiting Britons.

Away from the all the luxury and glamour of the attractions and hotels, a gun-toting, drug-fuelled menace awaits where people live in abject deprivation on a scale unimaginable in Britain, with our generous welfare state and infrastructure of public services.

This desperate poverty and squalor has served as the breeding ground for serious, often lethal crime from young men who feel they have nothing to lose, in a society which has given them nothing. And it is precisely this sense of desperation which makes these neighbourhoods so dangerous for those outsiders unfortunate or foolish enough to enter them.

The United States has always been a land of extremes. The richest country in the world also contains some of the most shameful poverty in the West. The land of liberty also has the most draconian criminal justice regime of any developed country, reflected not only in the retention of the death penalty but also in the massive prison population.

And although a nation of immigrants which prides itself on being a melting pot, America is still riven by deep-seated ethnic divisions.


Contrast: The resort of Long Boat Key, where the two men were staying is just 12 miles from Sarasota, but a whole world apart in terms of safety and wealth


How the other half live: Some properties in Long Beach can fetch £30m and belong to celebrities including Tiger Woods - yet within 20miles there are concrete housing estates and shanty towns

These extremes are carried to a heightened level in Florida. What always intrigued me about the state was that affluence and deprivation, crime and security could exist so closely beside each other. In Palm Beach, you can find properties worth around £30million, some belonging to celebrities such as Donald Trump and Tiger Woods.

The rich and famous here don’t just have one swimming pool attached to their mansions, they have two.

Yet within 20 miles you can find the most incredible poverty, either in squalid concrete jungles of housing estates or impoverished shanty towns.

The double murder of the two Britons is a case in point. They were, apparently, staying only 12 miles away from Sarasota in the attractive resort of Longboat Key, but the distance in safety and wealth was much greater. As I found, this disparity can occur even in a small area. Within one part of a Florida city, you could be walking down a street full of appealing shops and cafes.

Then suddenly, if you take a wrong turning, you find yourself on a bleak estate, filled with boarded-up properties and threatening graffiti.

Even in the most notorious areas of Latin America, such as inner-city Bogota in Colombia, you would struggle to find anything as bad. Similarly, you could be driving through the countryside and then come across a group of primitive huts, made of corrugated sheets or derelict caravans, resembling something that you might find in an African village. There would not even be running water, the inhabitants relying on a standpipe.


Bleak future: With the desperate poverty and squalor in some parts of the state, many young men feel they have nothing to lose and turn to crime

It is no surprise to find that Florida is therefore scarred by high rates of crime. In my experience, the state has fewer petty offences than urban Britain – binge drinking is much more rare, for instance. But the incidence of serious crime is much higher. It is telling that Britain has by far the largest prison population in Europe in proportion to its size, at a total of 85,000 inmates.

Yet 100,000 prisoners are held in the jails of Florida, even though the state’s 15million population is only a quarter of Britain’s. Murder, drugs, rape, and firearm offences are all much more common in Florida. Tourists are an obvious target for gangsters and opportunistic criminals. One of the most sinister crime waves I had to deal with as a diplomat involved British hotel guests attacked in their rooms by gunmen.

Not only did the thugs steal cash and personal possessions such as jewellery and passports, but they also sometimes locked the husband in the bathroom while they raped the wife.

I will never forget one case where two British pensioners in their seventies were attacked as they walked into their hotel room. The husband refused to go into the bathroom when ordered at gunpoint. Instead, he leapt at his assailant and, in a life-or-death-struggle, managed to disarm him, though he suffered a severe blow which cracked his skull.

It was a remarkable act of heroism and devotion to his wife, though the would-be rapist managed to escape. The pensioner told me afterwards at the consulate that he did not mind about the valuables, but when the robber threatened his spouse, he knew he had no alternative but to swing into action.

Hugh Hunter is the former British Vice-Consul in Florida, and author of Our Man In Orlando

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... -down.html

Look People.. I cant emphasize this enough... If you come to Florida please be safe. Its not what it used to be and is a very dangerous place

If you have been here in the past and plan on returning... be prepared for the shock of your life

Very sad..

Hows that melting pot working for ya What a sad,sad story. Well put together Sapper7 As a concealed weapon permit holder In 16 states I can only wonder If they would be alive today If they were armed A legal American citizen should be allowed to carry concealed In ANY STATE AT ANY TIME Criminals are always going to carry guns,and the public has a right to protect themselves. Many tragedies like this one could be avoided If (AGAIN) some of our liberal left wing criminal and Illegal loving politicians AND judges would follow the constitution and Interpret that constitution In the manner that It should. Politicians and JUDGES are destroying this country from within by making It easier for criminals to break the law and GET AWAY WITH IT We the people have to "BREAK OFF" the left wing of this country, and surgically repair It and re-form It with "WE THE PEOPLES" consent and approval ..... TS

i was thinking the same thing top secrect , here in america we americans know the best way to remain safe is to protect yourself , but forginers can't really know that can they ?

People labor under the old assumptions about travel , that this country is a safe place and all the people good and you never have to worry about where you go or at what time of day ...

The reality is this is a country that is quickly losing all hope and sliding into desperation ...

The United States has always been a land of extremes. The richest country in the world also contains some of the most shameful poverty in the West. The land of liberty also has the most draconian criminal justice regime of any developed country, reflected not only in the retention of the death penalty but also in the massive prison population.

What the hell? In my opinion we need MORE death penalty here. An eye for an eye. The way this writer puts it, it's like he has more sympathy for the killers.

The pic of the people in front of their homes looks like many I saw in Jamaica when we went there back in 1996. Unbelievable.....and to think in my younger days I longed to live in FL. Glad I got over that fantasy. The only part of that thought that I have not let go of is the "getting out of CA part".

Was this the work of an illegal alien gang? I can find no reference to illegals in the article.

Originally Posted by Mickey

Was this the work of an illegal alien gang? I can find no reference to illegals in the article.

This is the General Discussion forum. Not everything in General Discussion has to be about illegals.

Originally Posted by Mickey

Was this the work of an illegal alien gang? I can find no reference to illegals in the article.

General Discussion / Discuss the issues of illegal immigration, congress, the President, campaigns, legal immigration, security, laws, gangs, border patrol, and homeland security here.