Police Not To Blame In Shooting, Man Says
By CHRIS ECHEGARAY
[email protected]
Published: Oct 9, 2005
TAMPA - Willie Beamon was recovering, he said, his voice quivering Saturday as he stood in the doorway of his bungalow-style motel room on East Hillsborough Avenue.
A day after Tampa police killed the man who held Beamon and his girlfriend, Tracy Wood, hostage, the motel manager sat in his room watching college football, Rutgers against West Virginia.
Beamon tried not to relive being held hostage by a man high on crack and waving a loaded shotgun. He tried to suppress thoughts that he could have been the bystander to die with the gunman Friday morning. He tried not to think about his girlfriend, Tracy Wood, dying so violently.
He knew the gunman, Gary Brewer, 45, of Tampa.
Police said Brewer came looking for Beamon after first holding his own girlfriend, Cynthia Chin, hostage in her South Dale Mabry Highway condo for seven hours. Brewer apparently thought Beamon had been intimate with Chin.
Chin escaped by running to a neighbor's apartment about 4:30 a.m. and called 911. Brewer drove his Toyota pickup to the Luxury Motel, where he is accused of forcing Wood into Room 11 and putting a gun to Beamon's head.
When Brewer stopped his threats long enough to take a hit from a crack pipe, Beamon darted across the street and called police.
When officers arrived, they knocked on the door and heard two shots. Brewer had shot Beamon's dog, which later died, police said. He then dragged Wood outside, holding her against him, and fired at an officer hiding behind a trash can.
Four officers returned fire; Brewer had at least 10 bullet wounds.
Wood also was shot and taken to a hospital, where she later died. She was 33.
The four officers remained on paid administrative leave Saturday, pending an investigation, as per department policy.
Beamon didn't blame the police. They had to act, he said, because the scene was out of control.
Words did not come to him easily Saturday.
"Something happened ... and I've never been in a situation like that before," Beamon said. "I got out, others got out and I was hoping that she'd get out. But she didn't."
Outside Room 11, there was no police tape, no noise, no signs a deadly shootout took place at the Luxury Motel. There was just the afternoon rain and the whizzing of cars on Hillsborough Avenue.
A woman who identified herself as the motel owner shooed away reporters. "What's done is done," she said. "Go away."
Things also were quiet at the Valrico mobile home where the victim's 29-year-old brother, Marty Wood, lives with his family on Silver Lane.
He was not home, according to the women who answered the door holding two small children.