Tampa Police detectives are looking for suspects in the shooting death of a young man Tuesday evening.<\/p>\n
According to reports, Paul E. Smith, Jr. (pictured),<\/strong> 21, had been operating a car wash business on the corner of 34th<\/sup> Street and Lake Avenue.<\/p>\n A friend of Smith<\/strong> said a problem with the compressor forced Smith<\/strong> to shut down just after 5 p.m., and he walked a few blocks to the home of a friend to just hang out.<\/p>\n That friend lives in the 3400 block of Lindell Avenue, and said he, Smith<\/strong>, and a third person were sitting on his front porch when they noticed a white Chevrolet Impala with no rims or tinted windows pulling up.<\/p>\n The friend said before any of them could react, shots were being fired from the vehicle. He said he was grazed on the arm by a bullet, and when he started running, he noticed he was being chased. When he returned to the house, he found Smith<\/strong> dead from a pair of gunshot wounds to his head.<\/p>\n \u201cThank God I was sitting on the side of the porch, because if I was sitting where Paul<\/strong> was, both of us would be dead,\u201d said the friend.<\/p>\n \u201cThey never said anything. They just pulled up and started shooting. We think it\u2019s in retaliation for what happened in Grant Park.\u201d<\/p>\n Hopeton Virgo<\/strong>, who owns the businesses where the car wash was operating, said when he first met Smith<\/strong>, he was just one of the young men who hung out with some of the guys operating the car wash.<\/p>\n \u201cThe first group of guys operating the car wash couldn\u2019t get their act together, and they left. When I met Paul<\/strong>, I talked to him, and told him he could take over the car wash business, but he needed to take care of his paperwork first to make everything legal. I also told him to not have a bunch of guys hanging around.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Virgo<\/strong> said he first met Smith<\/strong> about 3 months ago, and found him to be respectful and hard working.<\/p>\n \u201cOn the day this happened, I had left to take care of some business. When I returned, I asked for Paul,<\/strong> and was told he had left because of a problem they were having with the compressor. Later, a guy came up crying and said Paul <\/strong>had been shot.<\/p>\n \u201cI tried to reach out to him. He was doing fine, and I never had any problems with him.\u201d<\/p>\n Police have not released any suspect information, but did say the shooting does not appear to be a random act.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Tampa Police detectives are looking for suspects in the shooting death of a young man Tuesday evening. According to reports, Paul E. Smith, Jr. (pictured), 21, had been operating a car wash business on the corner of 34th Street and Lake Avenue. A friend of Smith said a problem with the compressor forced Smith to […]<\/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-20873","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\/20873","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=20873"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20873\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}