Three East Tampa schools were on modified lockdown Wednesday morning as police searched the neighborhoods for armed suspects. Police were searching for men who reportedly approached students at two bus stops.<\/p>\n
According to the Tampa Police Department, a black, Ford F-250 truck, containing at least three young men pulled up to a bus stop at N. 43rd Street and Grove, around 6:50 a.m. As Armwood High School students were waiting for the bus, one of the suspects and displayed a gun. The suspects then fled the scene.<\/p>\n
One of the students called 9-1-1 and reported the incident to police. One of the victims was able to provide a name of a possible suspect to police.<\/p>\n
The second incident of displaying the gun allegedly took place at N. 42nd Street and E. Palifox a short time later. Officers in the area were given a description of the truck and began searching surrounding neighborhoods.<\/p>\n
As the search was underway, James Elementary School, Williams Middle School, and Gary Adult School were placed on modified lockdown.<\/p>\n
Officer Bryan Perry<\/strong> was on patrol when he observed a vehicle matching the description of the suspect vehicle near New First Union Missionary Baptist Church on E. Chelsea. The driver of the truck observed Officer Perry<\/strong> and sped off at a high rate of speed.<\/p>\n A short time later, Officer Perry<\/strong>, who was not chasing the suspects, discovered the truck flipped on its side at N. 38th Street and E. Louisiana Avenue a short time later. All of the suspects abandoned the vehicle and ran.<\/p>\n Two of the suspects were caught immediately and a third was caught a short time later. Around 7:50 a.m., police received a 9-1-1 call of a suspicious person. Upon arrival, they discovered that the suspect matched the description of a person involved in the earlier offense and took him into custody.<\/p>\n Akanfi Prat<\/strong>t, 18, and Mark Rivera<\/strong>, 20, were arrested and charged with resisting arrest without violence. Rivera<\/strong>, who was also charged with violation of probation, is being held without a bond. Pratt<\/strong> paid a $500 bond and was released.<\/p>\n Devin Sampson<\/strong>, 17, and Chris Thomas, Jr<\/strong>., 19, were both charged with 13 counts of aggravated assault with a firearm, resisting arrest without violence. Thomas<\/strong> was also charged with resisting arrest without violence, fleeing to elude, and resisting arrest without violence. He was injured and was treated at a local hospital for a head injury.<\/p>\n Thomas<\/strong> has no bond and is being held the Hillsborough County Jail. Sampson<\/strong>, who is a juvenile, was processed at the Juvenile Assessment Center.<\/p>\n Police said there were at least 13 victims, and possibly more at the bus stops. Some of the students went to school when their bus arrived. The investigation is continuing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Three East Tampa schools were on modified lockdown Wednesday morning as police searched the neighborhoods for armed suspects. Police were searching for men who reportedly approached students at two bus stops. According to the Tampa Police Department, a black, Ford F-250 truck, containing at least three young men pulled up to a bus stop at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":210,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/210"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14981"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14981\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}