Unlocked

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loaded

First of two parts | Nov. 1, 2017 By LAURA C. MOREL
Times Staff Writer

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Charles Kondek Jr. was the son of a New York City police detective. When he was a boy and his father headed to work, he would remind him: Don’t forget to wear your bullet-proof vest.

In 1991, the younger Kondek also joined the NYPD, where he worked for five years before moving to Florida to be closer to family.

While he applied for a full-time job at the Tarpon Springs Police Department, Kondek worked as a youth care specialist at a teen shelter. That’s where he met Teresa, who also worked there. He asked for her number. A few months later, he proposed at Pier 60 on Clearwater Beach.

For nearly two decades, they raised two daughters and three sons. He worked the midnight shift, so the kids never stayed with babysitters. During the day, he was in charge. At night, after Teresa got home, she took over.

“He never walked through the house without one, two or three of them behind him,” Teresa, 46, said in her first interview since her husband’s death. “He was like the backbone of everything. He was the first man my girls loved. He was my boys’ best friend.”

Kondek never raised his voice. He coached his youngest daughter’s soccer team. He came back from his shift every morning and toasted bagels for the kids. He took them to dentist appointments, often falling asleep in the waiting room. He bought Teresa and their daughters flowers on their birthdays and on Valentine’s Day. They vacationed in Tennessee, renting a cabin near the Great Smoky Mountains once a year.

Charles and Teresa held hands at the grocery store and while watching TV. During quiet shifts on patrol, the couple talked on the phone.

Just past midnight on Dec. 21, 2014, Teresa told him about the gifts on the Christmas list they still needed to buy. They hung up, and she finished wrapping some presents before going to bed.

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Just after 2 a.m., Tarpon Springs dispatchers received a call about a blaring car stereo in the parking lot of the Glen’s Eureka apartment building at 199 Grand Blvd.

Officers were tied up with a report about a bar fight, so Kondek volunteered to respond alone. Later, he called on the radio: “Need another unit!”

When officers arrived, they found Kondek, 45, lying on the pavement, a gunshot near his collarbone. The shooter had sped away in a white Hyundai Elantra, driving over Kondek.

He crashed into a power pole and a Ford truck half a mile north of Glen’s Eureka, then bolted from the car. Officers found him crouched under a nearby staircase.

In the center console of the Hyundai, they found a Glock 27. Detectives searched its serial number in the Florida Crime Information Center, a statewide database used to identify missing property.

It was the gun taken from the Honda in Jacksonville four months earlier.

Days later, Charles Kondek Sr. learned where the Glock had come from. He was angry at the killer and at the gun owner who left his car unlocked.

“If he locked his door,” the elder Kondek said, “the odds are my son might still be alive now.”

The Glock’s owner, who was listed as an employee for an aircraft repair company in a police report, did not respond to calls or letters from the Times/Reveal.

The shooter, Marco Antonio Parilla Jr., was a felon who had recently served a three-year sentence for an array of charges that included selling cocaine and marijuana, trafficking in stolen property and leaving the scene of a crash involving an injury.

At the time of Kondek’s death, Parilla was wanted for violating his probation after a judge found out he was using and selling cocaine. He went to Glen’s Eureka to confront his former roommate, Jareem Roach. Parilla believed Roach snitched to police about his drug use.

In October, Parilla pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and is now awaiting his sentencing, where prosecutors will seek the death penalty. He told detectives he bought the gun from a man in Tampa and claimed not to know the seller’s name. Pinellas Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, whose agency investigated Kondek’s murder, said it’s “very typical of how stolen guns move around.”

That Christmas morning, four days after her husband’s death, Teresa didn’t know if she should wake up the kids, in their teens and early 20s. Charles had always done that. When she finally did, they didn’t want to open presents from their dad, knowing it would be the last time.

“There was never any crying here or sadness here in our house,” Teresa said. “That was I think the hardest thing. To get used to seeing your kids cry.”

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Police records obtained by the Times/Reveal detail several instances where guns resurfaced during investigations since Kondek’s 2014 death.

In September 2016, a .38-caliber handgun was taken from a car in Largo. Four months later, a felon with convictions for sexual battery, burglary and kidnapping used it to kill a co-worker in Clearwater.

The same month, a Seminole woman was arrested on charges of operating a drug house, where deputies found cocaine, marijuana and a .38-caliber handgun. It had been reported stolen in 2013.

In December, a 17-year-old fleeing deputies in a stolen car was carrying a gun taken from a Hillsborough gun shop. He was wanted in Orlando on a warrant for murder.

What people don’t realize, said Detective Dale Groves of Jacksonville’s auto burglary task force, is that leaving a gun in an unlocked car “opens the realm to so many other crimes.”

“We’ll have guns stolen, which leads to robberies, which leads to homicides, which leads to shootings,” he said. “If we could just eliminate vehicles being left unlocked, we eliminate a very high crime rate."

The roughly 82,000 stolen guns in the state database are also likely a drastic undercount. Florida law doesn’t require gun owners to report thefts, and agencies remove guns from the database when they’re recovered.

The statewide database also represents only instances when reports of missing guns include a serial number. At the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office, 40 percent of reports lacked one between 2014 and 2016.

When a gun is reported stolen without a serial number, investigators try to get it from the retailer. But gun owners don’t always remember where they bought their weapons, and there may be no record if the gun was sold by a private dealer.

“Without a serial number on the firearm, we’re really dead in the water,” said Martin, the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office detective who investigates car burglaries. “It might as well not even exist.”

The weapon

THE GLOCK: The black .40-caliber Glock 27 used to kill Officer Charles Kondek is a semiautomatic pistol with serial number 1ENK082US. It was purchased on June 10, 2004, by a Jacksonville man, has a retail price of about $600, and weighs 27 ounces when it’s loaded. The gun’s standard magazine capacity is nine rounds. A box of 50 rounds for this gun costs about $10.
THE MANUFACTURER: Based in Smyrna, Ga., GLOCK, Inc., has manufacturing facilities throughout the United States and Austria. About 65 percent of law enforcement agencies in the United States carries Glock firearms, according to the company.
NUMBERS: In Florida, at least 9,600 Glock pistols reported stolen since 2007 are still missing.

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On a recent summer afternoon, Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office Assistant Chief Greg Burton stood at the entrance of Jacobs Way, a gated community in the northern stretches of the sprawling city. As cars approached, Burton walked to drivers’ windows with a smile.

“We’re just out saying, ‘Hi,’ ” he told one woman as he handed her a pamphlet. “And warning people, asking people to lock those doors.”

The fence encircling Jacobs Way isn’t enough to keep car burglars away, Burton said. Thieves slip in at night to tug on door handles.

It’s happening across Jacksonville, too. In 2015 and 2016, 1,046 guns were taken from unsecured cars, according to Sheriff’s Office data. At 9 every night, the agency posts a reminder to residents on Twitter and Instagram to lock their cars and homes: “We are depending on YOU because YOU can prevent a tragedy. Remove guns, lock doors!”

Other departments are taking more drastic steps. “Where we had the greatest success is taking matters into our own hands and locking their doors for them,” Gualtieri said.

At the Pinellas Sheriff’s Office last year, four out of every five auto burglaries that resulted in a stolen gun involved an unlocked car. At the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office, it was more than half.

Some experts say the answer needs to come from legislation.

Andrew Jay McClurg, a law professor at the University of Memphis who teaches gun policy, points to countries like Canada that have mandatory gun storage laws requiring owners to keep their weapons secured.

“A lot of people aren’t really aware of the dangers of unsecured guns,” he said. “I do think it would make people more cautious.”

Nationwide, Massachusetts is the only state that requires guns be secured at all times. Cities like San Francisco and New York City also have safe-storage laws.

But Florida went a different way. The Legislature here barred municipalities in 1987 from passing their own gun restrictions. The law is supported by the National Rifle Association, which declined to comment for this story. Today, similar laws have been passed in more than 40 states, according to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

So that leaves any gun storage legislation in the hands of state lawmakers.

State Sen. Darryl Rouson, D-St. Petersburg, called the thousands of stolen guns in Florida “atrocious” and said he will look into drafting a proposal to address the issue. That could include new penalties or insurance incentives.

“What it speaks to is negligence and lack of diligence in securing weapons,” he said. “Somehow, we’ve got to get the attention of private owners.”

Eric Friday, general counsel of the gun rights group Florida Carry, said owners often have no choice but to leave their weapons in cars if they’re not allowed to take them into certain businesses or workplaces.

“Our responsibility to be safe with our firearms doesn’t mean that we can stop all criminal acts that might occur against us,” he said, equating a stolen gun to the theft of a laptop that is later used for fraud or downloading child pornography. “I’m not sure why we have so many pushes to treat gun owners as anything other than the victims they are when the property is stolen."

The last gun storage-related legislation in Florida passed in 1989, requiring gun owners to store weapons away from children.

“It’s such a poisonous political issue for politicians,” McClurg added. “Rarely will you find a politician in a red state with the courage to stand up for even a reasonable gun regulation.”

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At his Hudson home, Kondek’s father keeps mementoes that remind him of his son. A blue and black “officer down” flag hangs from his garage. On a shelf, he displays copies of programs for memorials that honor fallen officers imprinted with the younger Kondek’s name.

At night, dreams sometimes take him back to Dec. 21, 2014. He sees his son lying on the ground, no one nearby to help.

“It’s not fair,” Kondek said. “It’s not fair that this happened.”

Teresa doesn’t dwell on the day her husband died, the person who pulled the trigger, or how he came to have that gun. She focuses on their family and his legacy.

This summer, Teresa dropped off their youngest daughter at college. In January, their other daughter will get married. Tarpon Springs officers will walk her down the aisle.

“I know Charlie is really counting on me to make sure the kids are okay and that I keep our family the way we meant it to be,” Teresa said.

At home, her husband smiles from family photos on the walls. She keeps the last shirt he wore in a bag so it won’t lose his smell. The family still makes its annual trip to Tennessee, leaving bracelets with Kondek’s name along hiking trails.

Around her neck is a gold pendant in the shape of his badge. The back is engraved with the words Kondek wrote to her in a letter after their engagement:

“Thank you for saying yes.”

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About the reporting

For this project, the Tampa Bay Times/Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting examined stolen gun data and police reports from multiple law enforcement agencies, as well as a state database created by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

The database serves as a snapshot of the number of stolen guns still missing in Florida at the time it was downloaded, in this case mid-July, since the records change frequently as guns are entered and removed when they’re recovered. The records do not include cases that are part of active investigations, though FDLE officials estimate that nearly every gun report is entered into the database.

For specific numbers that show how guns are stolen or how often they’re recovered, the Times/Reveal requested those figures directly from five agencies: the Tampa Police Department and the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office, as well as the Hillsborough, Pinellas, and Polk county sheriff’s departments. It’s common for guns reported stolen in one area to be recovered in another city or county. Because of this, some departments included guns reported stolen in other jurisdictions as part of their recovered numbers.

The Times/Reveal, throughout its reporting, interviewed more than 40 people, including law enforcement officials, gun policy researchers, and gun owners.

About the reporter

Laura C. Morel

covers criminal courts in Pinellas County. She joined the Tampa Bay Times in May 2012. Born and raised in Miami, she holds degrees from Miami Dade College and Emerson College. Contact her at [email protected]. Follow @lauracmorel. Morel produced this story as a Reveal Investigative Fellow. The fellowship, supported by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and Democracy Fund, provides journalists of color support and training to create investigative reporting projects in partnership with their news outlets.