Two Britons shot dead during Florida holiday in notorious gang area (teen arrested)

[alp227]

Source: The Guardian

Two British holidaymakers have been shot and killed in Florida in what police believe may have been a botched robbery.

James Kouzaris, 24, and James Cooper, 25, former students at the University of Sheffield, were found dead in Newtown, a crime-ridden neighbourhood of Sarasota, at about 3am on Saturday.

Police have arrested a 16-year-old on suspicion of murder but were unable to provide any further details about what the two friends were doing in the early hours of the morning in an area of the city notorious for gang activity. "That is one of the key things we are investigating, just why they were there," Captain Paul Sutton of the Sarasota police department told the Guardian.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/18/british-murders-florida-arrest

[angstlessk]

1. Do hotels and airlines give out maps to visitors to 'notorious gang areas'?

and how to avoid them?

[2Design]

6. even police won't tell you when renting because landlords get on them

realtors aren't allow to tell you
hotels or motels in bad areas are highly unlikely to say don't stay here

criminal are protected now

[AtheistCrusader]

11. They did when I went to Jamaica.

Well, the US state department informed us.

The British have a similar mechanism when travelling abroad.

[msongs]

2. gun owners shoot two britons....very sad news nt

[Atypical Liberal]

5. Very likely ILLEGAL gun owner

We'll have to follow this one to be sure, but since this looks like an armed robbery, and since people who commit murders with firearms usually have extensive criminal histories, I'm going to predict that this "gun owner" was already legally precluded from owning firearms.

Obviously little details like lawful firearm ownership don't mean much to people willing to commit murder for profit.

[Populist_Prole]

8. Good point n/t

[AtheistCrusader]

12. A 16 year old with a pistol? 'Gun owners' lol.

[Union Scribe]

15. What is this, some new framing technique?

[Very_Boring_Name]

19. +1

[WatsonT]

24. Gang Member shoots two britons

[monmouth]

3. Well gee, crime-ridden area at three in the morning. Were they looking

for aspirin?

[Igel]

7. Hard to say.

I wound up in a really bad area in N. Jersey. Didn't realize that the address I was looking for (street # + street name) repeated 4 or 5 times as I crossed from burg to burg.

In the Czech Republic once at 2 a.m. I was walking home. (It was a small enough city.) Wound up in a fairly scuzzy area. The road made a Y. I'd always walked on the west side of the road. That night, I was on the east side. Oops.

Same thing happened my first time in Manhatten. I thought I was going straight; two avenues intersected at a small angle, I veered slightly west. (Something similar happened in December when I was taking my wife to the Houston Amtrak station. Roads didn't form nice right angles, I started a few miles N of downtown and wound up in NW Houston getting on Loop 8 when I thought I had been heading S, towards downtown.)

We won't even discuss my time in some scuzzy section of Los Angeles. Missed my exit, got off at the next one but found that there wasn't a corresponding entrance. That was fun.

Or perhaps they were after drugs or whores. Hard to know. Which is my point.

I have no trouble blaming the victim when the victim actually did bring it on himself. First it has to be established that he did bring it on himself.

[LisaL]

10. Maybe they got lost? Being new to the city and all?

[Blue_Tires]

20. Miami Herald says 3 p.m.

Not sure which account is correct, though

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/04/18/2173005/fla-teen-accused-of-killing-2.html

[muriel_volestrangler]

23. majority of accounts say 3am

http://www2.tbo.com/content/2011/apr/17/sarasota-teen-accused-of-killing-two-tourists/news-breaking/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-13113065
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/8457532/Two-Britons-shot-dead-in-Florida-housing-block.html

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

37. GPS

GPS navigation has led me to a number of places I would rather have not been,

[Pharaoh]

4. So according to police

why where they there?

WTF, I live in wisconsin, if I were murdered, would the police say, why were you there?

[Boudica the Lyoness]

14. That pissed me off as well

[snooper2]

28. Maybe they were picking up something to take back to Britain

Who knows...

It's certainly a valid question to ask when you are researching a murder

[LisaL]

38. One theory I saw in a british nespaper is that somebody

gave them a lift to what they thought was back to the hotel, but instead they were brought to the area.

[Zephie]

9. I grew up in Sarasota and went to high school for a few years in Newtown

before returning to home schooling. I can say one thing about Newtown at 3am: One does not end up there by accident at that hour. When I started going to school there I had to stay after hours for the drama program and many friends and family worried quite a bit at the prospect of being in the area after dark. Luckily the high school is one of the "safer" areas, but still somewhere you would not want to be caught alone in for very long at night.

The line between Sarasota city and Newtown is very obvious - you go from well kept and maintained buildings to tenement very swiftly (in the course of nearly one block) and the roads have been under construction constantly for at least 20 years. It's a common joke that the industrial work in the area will never be done due to the city of Sarasota not giving a crap about what happens up there - Sarasota is still very racially and financially segregated and Newtown is just about the only place where those with little income can afford to live. Combined with poor policing due to lack of interest in the needs of the people of the area and it's a recipe for disaster.

[Boudica the Lyoness]

13. You do end up in 'bad areas' by accident

I recall coming to the US for the first time in 1973 on vacation and I wasn't familiar with what American 'bad' areas were. I had no idea that just because an area was low income or racially segregated it was a dangerous place to be. Florida is the place many Brits want to go on vacation and I know some think the whole bloody state is a vacation wonderland.

[MyrnaLoy]

16. if we handed out

handguns to all of our foreign tourists none of this would happen.

[DCKit]

17. That's a pretty simplistic attitude.

They'll also need bullets, and instructions on how to load and shoot.

[Kolesar]

18. Hand them out preloaded then

There just might be some sarcasm on this thread

[slackmaster]

22. I think that's a stupid idea

:shrug:

[Atypical Liberal]

25. Well we can certainly see what happens when victims are unarmed.

Seems pretty obvious what happens to unarmed victims of violent crime. I don't see how it could possibly have been worse if the tourists had been able to defend themselves.

[primavera]

26. Welcome to the United States!

Here's your flack jacket and your Uzi, be sure you never leave your hotel without them. Enjoy your stay!

[Vinee]

34. perhaps if the suspect, who had been arrested for a gun crime 2 weeks ago, were in jail

none of this would happen? Why was this piece of shit walking the streets in the first place? this is not the first time that a convicted violent offender was released onto the streets only to kill someone a short time later. It happened in my home town a while back in fact. A dude was released for holding someone up with a knife. He gets released and does it again but this time he stabbed and killed his victim. I think he's looking at the DP now. I'm all for keeping guns out of the hands of criminals but that has to start with keeping violent criminals where they belong, in prison. If you can't afford that, start executing the murderers. If you can't stomach that or afford lengthy prison sentences, then you need to allow law abiding citizens to defend themselves from your failed policies.

[slackmaster]

21. Another tragedy caused by easy access to notorious gang areas

:argh:

[snooper2]

29. "caused by easy access"

:rofl:

Maybe the gang leaders should setup checkpoints on major roadways.



Yo, why you going down this street beyatch?

Um, I was just trying to get to a lumber yard on the other side of 35

You are entering gang land, you not buying any crank or weed?

Nope, just some 2x6's and some 2x3's

Okay, $10 charge for you....The charge is waived if you are coming to buy drugs or head job

Here's $10 bucks, for future reference, how good is the weed? :P

[Zorro]

27. Newtown is not a tourist destination

Looks like they were in one of the project areas, from the map at the Sarasota Herald-Tribune site.

The story has been updated to indicate 3PM now.

[dipsydoodle]

30. Florida gun deaths suspect named as Shawn Tyson

A 16-year-old boy charged with the murders of two British holidaymakers in Florida has been named by detectives.

Shawn Tyson is due in court later charged with murdering James Kouzaris, 24, from Northampton, and James Cooper, 25, of Warwick.

The friends were found shot dead 50ft from each other in a street in the city of Sarasota early on Saturday.

Police said the boy had previously been arrested for aggravated assault with a handgun on 7 April.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-13124035

[slackmaster]

31. "Police said the boy had previously been arrested for aggravated assault with a handgun on 7 April"

WTF was he doing out of jail?

:wtf:

[Art_from_Ark]

32. Out on bail, I would assume

[slackmaster]

33. Granting him bail was obviously a mistake

:argh:

[Paladin]

35. Ya Think?

Thank Christ he was able to exercise his 2nd Amendment rights in time to arm up for those tourists, right?

[slackmaster]

36. No, I'm afraid that's not right.

Plenty of bad assumptions and prejudice on your part.