By Ben Montgomery and Danny Valentine, Times Staff Writers
Monday, September 27, 2010
VALRICO — Kanina James doesn't know why the man accused of shooting her husband was released after being questioned by the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office.
"It's over and it's done and it can't be undone," she said on the phone to a friend this morning. "Yeah, they caught him and they let him go. I don't know why."
She chain-smoked Marlboro Golds on her back porch in the Twin Lakes neighborhood, on a white wicker bench, blotting her eyes with a paper towel and trying to makes sense of how a father-daughter basketball game turned deadly.
Friends and authorities said around 4 p.m. Sunday, David James, 41, who spent 20 years in the Air Force, was enjoying a game of basketball with his 8-year-old daughter when he was shot and killed in front of her by a neighbor trying to chase away skateboarders.
The Sheriff's Office has not released the shooter's name, but neighbors identified him as Trevor Dooley, 69, a school bus driver and New York City transplant who moved to this typically quiet neighborhood several years ago.
The neighbors said James was defending the skateboarders, who have had multiple run-ins with Dooley.
"We've gone off on each other before," said James' stepson, 17-year-old Garrett James.
Mark Cox, a State Attorney's Office spokesman, said he couldn't yet explain why the man has not been charged.
"It's still very much a pending investigation," he said. "We're working on it diligently."
Kanina James said her husband was a good man. "He would help anybody out. I think that's what happened yesterday. I think he was just trying to help someone out."
The two met when Kanina worked as a cocktail waitress in Las Vegas. She was taken by his big muscles and his eyes. "I remember thinking, 'He's just so beautiful.' His eyes were so pretty.' " They married a few years later, in 1998.
James was in love with his daughter Danielle. The two played basketball every Sunday and rode around the neighborhood on a Kawasaki Vulcan motorcycle with a special seat for Danielle.
"He and Danielle were so close," Kanina said. "He was her best friend. Now that person took her best friend away from her."
Kanina learned her husband had been shot when a woman called from his cell phone. She hurried to the park and noticed that paramedics were not working on him. She tried to run to him but deputies held her back.
At the scene, Danielle asked her mother why no one was helping her Dad. "I just said, 'He already went up to heaven.'"