2 Accused of Setting Tourist Afire Face Trial in Tampa : Crime: Black man survives after 40% of his body was burned. The case involving two white suspects is being viewed as a hate crime.
TAMPA, Fla. — More than five months after a black tourist was abducted and set on fire in an isolated area east of here, the crime has lost none of its power of revulsion. And on Monday, the events of last New Year’s Day will be revisited as two white men go on trial for the assault.
In what is one of the most heinous of several sensational crimes in this area in recent years, laborers Mark Kohut, 26, and Charles Rourk, 33, are charged with attempted murder, kidnaping and robbery. Arrested a week after the attack, they have been held without bond since.
The case has drawn national attention and galvanized civil rights groups alarmed by what has been labeled a hate crime.
“It is shocking and outrageous,†said attorney Hewitt Esmond Smith, president of the Tampa chapter of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People. “We shudder at the thought that such an incident could occur in our community at this day and time.â€
The victim, Christopher Wilson, 32, a clerk at a brokerage house in Brooklyn, N.Y., had stopped at a shopping center to buy a newspaper when he was forced at gunpoint to drive to an isolated area, doused with gasoline and set on fire.
A note left at the scene read: “One les nigger, one more to go.†It was signed, “KKK.â€
Although burned over 40% of his body, Wilson survived.
Late last month, a third man originally charged in the case, Jeffrey Ray Pellett, 18, pleaded guilty in federal court to abetting an armed car theft and agreed to plead guilty to a single state charge of accessory after the fact. He is to testify against Rourk and Kohut.
“He is an eyewitness to the burning,†said Pellett’s attorney, Mark Ober.
Based on his client’s statements, Ober said the original motive for the crime was robbery but that race became a factor. “Unfortunately, Christopher Wilson was at the wrong place at the wrong time,†he said.
But, he added, Pellett admitted that, “when they left and Mr. Wilson was burning, they shouted derogatory racial comments†at him.
Wilson, who was abducted in Valrico, about 15 miles east of here, was set ablaze with a cigarette lighter while sitting in his car. As his assailants fled, he was able to roll out of the vehicle, douse the flames and seek help.
When police arrived, they reported that Wilson was in so much pain he begged them to shoot him.
Prosecutor Len Register of the Hillsborough County State Attorney’s office said he does not doubt that the attack was racially motivated. “Making a human torch out of someone, that in and of itself makes it outrageous in the minds of the public,†Register said.
After weeks of hospitalization in Tampa and in New York, Wilson was questioned by lawyers for the defendants and prosecutors in February. During those interviews, Register said: “As he was reliving what happened to him, he shared with me that he had a strong burning sensation return to his chest.â€
“It was painful for him physically and emotionally,†Register said.
Kohut has a previous Florida conviction for dealing cocaine in 1985 and for acting as a pimp for his teen-age wife in 1988. He had been listed as a parole violator since 1989.
His attorney, public defender Julianne Holt, said Kohut has passed a polygraph test, which indicates that he was not involved and there is no physical evidence linking him to the crime. But Wilson has identified Kohut from a photograph as one of the men who attacked him.
Rourk has no criminal record in Florida. Neither man has been found to have ties to the Ku Klux Klan or other hate groups.
Other sensational cases that have rocked the Tampa area in recent years include:
* The 1986 beating by police of New York Mets pitcher Dwight Gooden, a Tampa native, and four friends after their car was pulled over in traffic. Gooden charged police with using racial slurs.
* The 1989 drowning murders of an Ohio farm wife and her two daughters. An escaped convict, Oba Chandler, was arrested and charged with the killings last September.
* The 1991 “Urbanski rape case,†in which five young men from prominent families, including the son of Tampa Tribune President James Urbanski, were charged with drugging and sexually assaulting a woman they met in a bar. One of the five was tried and convicted of two felonies.
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