Man accused of hate crime in Tampa dog park shooting to remain jailed until trial

A man accused of a hate crime in the killing of a gay man at a West Tampa dog park last month will be held without bail until his trial begins, a Hillsborough County judge ordered in court Monday.

Gerald Declan Radford was arrested and charged with second-degree murder more than a month after the shooting that left John Walter Lay dead.

Friends of both men told the Tampa Bay Times that Radford had been harassing Lay for months, calling him homophobic slurs and threatening him. Radford has claimed the shooting was self-defense and that he didn’t start the fight that ended when he shot Lay in the chest.

Radford, 65, was arrested on March 8 and booked in the Orient Road Jail.

In a news release that day, the State Attorney’s Office said Radford called 911 the morning of Feb. 2 and said he’d shot a man in the dog park. When deputies arrived, Radford told them he and Lay had been in a “scuffle” and he pulled a gun and shot him, the release stated. There were no eyewitnesses to the shooting.

In Radford’s first appearance in court on March 9, a Hillsborough judge determined there was probable cause for the charge against Radford.

New evidence brought by the state Monday was enough to keep Radford in jail until his case is resolved, Judge Caroline Tesche Arkin ruled.

Assistant State Attorney Ronald Gale argued the bullet trajectory discovered during Lay’s autopsy was inconsistent with Radford’s account of the shooting.

Radford told detectives that Lay struck him in the head with an object and he fell to the ground.

While laying on his back with Lay on top of him, Radford said he rolled over, pulled out his gun from a holster on his right hip and shot Lay.

The medical examiner who conducted Lay’s autopsy found the bullet entered the right side of Lay’s chest and traveled down and to the left before it lodged in his lower left lumbar.

The state argued the bullet’s path refutes Radford’s account that he pulled the gun and shot from his right side. Instead, the bullet traveled from Lay’s right side to his left in the opposite direction of where Radford said he had shot Lay.

Lay’s body had multiple scrapes on his knees, according to the autopsy. Deputies said they found Radford at the scene with cuts and bruises on his face and around his eyes.

In the initial 911 call, Radford said Lay attacked him with a metal bottle. Detectives found two metal travel cups at the scene. Radford identified one as his own and said he didn’t know who owned the other one.

Forensics tests didn’t find any blood on the cup that Radford couldn’t identify.

Prosecutors also pointed to multiple witnesses who said Radford had threatened Lay, including cellphone video footage recorded by Lay the day before he was killed.

“He comes up to me and screams at me, ‘You’re going to die, you’re going to die,’ and I asked him to just leave me alone,” Lay states in the video, which was shown in court Monday.

Robert Harrop, a Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office homicide detective and the lead investigator in the case, testified that a witness overheard Radford say, “I just want to kill him,” and using an expletive after walking away from an argument with Lay days before the shooting.

Harrop also told prosecutors witnesses had told him that Radford repeatedly referred to Lay as “a common gay slur.”

“The LGBTQ community in Hillsborough County should be in fear of Mr. Radford, who shows no hesitation using a hateful gay slur,” Gale said.

Radford’s lawyer, Marie Taylor, argued in court Monday that the state’s case is about “politics, media attention and not evidence.”

“The only thing that changed between Feb. 2 and March 8 is that the media decided this was a story,” Taylor said.

Taylor also argued that Radford, who is not a U.S. citizen, was not a flight risk and doesn’t own a passport. Arrest records show Radford was born in Ireland.

In a follow-up interview with detectives at his home on Feb. 8, Radford lamented the fact that he was being accused of a hate crime, according to court documents.

“I can’t believe they are trying to make this thing a hate crime,” he told detectives. “What a septic thing to do.”

Radford also told detectives he didn’t like Lay because Lay treated him poorly, not because he was gay.

If he is found guilty as charged, he could face a sentence of life in prison. If a jury finds Radford guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter with a weapon, which typically carries a punishment of up to 30 years in prison, he also could be sentenced to life under the hate crime enhancement.