Family and friends of a Florida man who was fatally shot at a dog park on Feb. 2 say the gunman had made homophobic threats toward him for years.
The day before he was killed, 52-year-old John Walter Lay sent a video to his friends describing a man who was making threats to his life, the Tampa Bay Times reported.
In the video, which was obtained by the Tampa Bay Times, Lay said the person had approached him that morning and screamed, “You’re gonna die!”
“So this morning while I’m walking — and we’re the only two here — 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, and so far he has,” Lay said in the video.
Lay’s family and friends say he was talking about Gerald Declan Radford, 65, who told law enforcement he killed Lay in self-defense.
“I was attacked. I defended myself. End of story,” Radford told the Tampa Bay Times.
Radford was not arrested. The Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office told HuffPost in an email on Wednesday that there are currently no criminal charges against him and that the investigation would be turned over to the state attorney’s office when it’s concluded by the sheriff’s office.
A spokesperson for the local state attorney’s office told HuffPost on Thursday that it has not yet received a report on the investigation.
Lay’s loved ones say they do not believe Radford was acting in self-defense. Albert Darlington, Lay’s friend and landlord, told the Tampa Bay Times that the victim had faced homophobic threats from Radford, who goes by “Dec,” for more than a year.
“For over a year, Dec has done nothing but harass Walt. He screams and hollers and calls him a f****t every time he gets to the dog park,” Darlington told the newspaper. “He’ll sit there and he’ll say, ‘I’d like to punch him right in the f**king mouth’ ... and it has gotten worse and worse and worse.”
Paul Gumpert, another friend of Lay, told WTSP-TV in Tampa Bay that he is also convinced the shooting happened because the victim was a gay man.
Gumpert told WTSP that he had requested “a red flag investigation” from authorities and expressed his concerns about the public’s safety.
In a separate interview with WTVT-TV in Tampa, Darlington said he knew Radford well and received a text message and photo from him the day of the shooting.
According to the the Fox affiliate, the photo showed Radford with apparent injuries to his face and text that said, “I’m so sorry to tell you, Walt attacked me at the park and I had to defend myself.”
Darlington told the Tampa Bay Times the he received the photo before finding out his friend was killed. “My first impression was, this looks like you’re building an excuse for something that already happened. Little did I know that Walt was already dead.”
Darlington told WTVT that “I don’t buy that Walt attacked anybody” and said he’d often seen Lay try to stay clear of Radford.
Sabrena Hughes, Lay’s sister, told WTVT she does not believe her brother was the aggressor, adding that Radford had been harassing Lay for about two years and echoed accounts that her brother tried to avoid him.
“One thing he was not was violent and he never, ever would have attacked anyone,” Hughes told WTVT of her brother.
According to the Tampa Bay Times, Lay’s dog, Roxy, will be taken care of by a friend in the area so she can continue to visit her friends at the dog park.