The homeowners who provided police with the eerie surveillance video of the hooded man accused in a string of fatal shootings in a Tampa neighborhood want a piece of the $110,000 reward.
Police there released the video of the suspect slowly walking down a Seminole Heights street just before an Oct. 9 shooting and running in the opposite direction moments later.
The cameras that captured the snippet replayed on national news for weeks are attached to Patrick and Kelly Holladay’s bungalow in Seminole Heights. It would have been nice, they said Monday, to have shared in the $110,000 reward money after Howell Emanuel Donaldson III was arrested last month.
In the end, the reward money was handed over to Delonda Walker, a manager at the Ybor City McDonald’s where Donaldson worked.
On Nov. 28, police say, Donaldson handed Walker a paper McDonald’s bag and told her to hold it for him. She looked inside after he left, saw a .40-caliber handgun and gave it to a Tampa police officer who was in the restaurant.
After Donaldson’s arrest, Kelly Holladay called Crime Stoppers and wrote a letter to Dugan to make their case for a reward. Dugan and Buckhorn announced Dec. 1 that Walker would get the money. Most, if not all, of the money has already been awarded to her.
The Holladays said the police officers and detectives thanked them for the video at the time but the couple hasn’t received an official thank-you.
That will apparently come at a yet-to-be scheduled ceremony, when the police department will invite the Holladays and others who assisted with the investigation, Hegarty said. He noted that one of the Holladays’ neighbors also provided a video clip of the suspect.
"We are grateful and we do plan to formally thank them and others who helped in anyway they could," he said.
Said Kelly Holladay: "The other people who provided video, give them money too, if you want people to keep helping you."