Florida teenager charged with killing British pair ‘confessed to cellmate’

Shawn Tyson has denied April murder of James Cooper and James Kouzaris in Newtown, Sarasota A youth accused of shooting dead two British holidaymakers in a crime-ridden Florida neighbourhood confessed to a fellow inmate shortly after he was arrested, according to newly released court documents. Shawn Tyson, 16, has denied killing James Cooper, 25, and James Kouzaris, 24, as they staggered drunkenly through Newtown, Sarasota, in the early hours of 16 April after a night out drinking. But, according to prosecutors, Tyson told the prisoner: “Yeah, I did it” only 24 hours after the shooting. The inmate said he asked what had happened and Tyson replied: “It’s trill,” – a slang word for “gangster”. In a recorded phone call from the Sarasota county jail to another witness known only as “brother”, Tyson apparently lamented the discovery by detectives of bullets at his house of the same calibre used to murder the Britons. “They found the bullets. That’s the only thing that’s going to fuck me up,” he told the friend. The same witness told police Tyson claimed he approached the Britons from behind after watching them stagger along the road and that he went to “fire off” at them because he assumed they were trying to break into a vehicle. The new details come in about 300 pages of documents released by the state attorney’s office in Sarasota that set out the largely circumstantial case against Tyson, who has been in custody for almost two months after being charged as an adult on two counts of first degree homicide. Included are witness statements that shed light for the first time on how Cooper and Kouzaris travelled to The Courts housing project, seven miles from the upmarket Longboat Key resort where they were enjoying a three-week holiday with Cooper’s family. The question had puzzled detectives for weeks until a taxi driver came forward to report that he remembered picking up two men “with British accents” at the Smokin’ Joes bar in central Sarasota and driving them to a 7-Eleven late-night grocery store in Newtown. Kouzaris, from Northampton, and Cooper, from Warwick, were caught on CCTV drinking in the bar just before closing time, about an hour before they were found dead in the street in Newtown, two miles away, shirtless and with multiple gunshot wounds. Medical records released by the Sarasota coroner, meanwhile, show that the pair, who became friends as students at the University of Sheffield, had blood alcohol levels more than three times Florida’s legal limit for driving. Although the documents reveal how the pair got to Newtown, they appear to stoke further speculation as to what they were doing there. A neighbour who lives close to the murder scene allegedly told police that she believed one of the Britons had previously visited her neighbour’s boyfriend. Another female resident of The Courts, listed only as a “confidential informant”, told detectives that she saw Tyson leaping in through the open window of his mother’s house within moments of the shooting. She identified Tyson as one of two people she saw running away. She said she heard shots then a neighbour told her that someone had been killed. Sarasota police, who have previously admitted they were seeking a second suspect, are investigating another shooting in Newtown, in which a 21-year-old was killed. Willie Hadley, 21, who lived less than a mile from where Cooper and Kouzaris were shot, was gunned down during the early hours of Monday on Martin Luther Way, five blocks from the scene of the April shooting. Police called to the scene at 2am found Hadley, who had been released from jail only a few days previously, lying dead in the road after local residents reported hearing gunfire. Tyson’s trial is expected to take place next year. He faces a probable life sentence if convicted. Gun crime United States Florida Richard Luscombe guardian.co.uk

Posted by on June 14, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.