Homeowner grabs AR-15 and shoots at pool cleaner he thought was intruder, Florida cops say

A Florida man will not face charges after emptying the magazine of his AR-15 in his backyard at his pool cleaner who he thought was a man trying to break into his home, a sheriff said.

On June 15 around 9 p.m., a resident of Dunedin, 57, and his wife, 43, were watching a movie in their front bedroom when they got up to grab something to eat from their kitchen, Sheriff Bob Gualtieri of the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office said in a June 26 news conference.

The couple heard noises coming from their pool lanai and looked out the window to see a man walking around by their pool in the screened-in yard, the sheriff said.

They told deputies they didn’t recognize the man and said he was close to the house and moving toward the door. The woman locked their side door and yelled to her husband that there was someone on their pool deck, Gualtieri said.

The man yelled outside for the person to “go away,” multiple times, he told deputies, but the couple still heard noises outside after the warnings. The woman called 911, and the man went to grab his Colt M4 carbine rifle, the sheriff said.

“This Colt M4 carbine rifle is what most people would call an AR-15 rifle,” the sheriff said. “The rifle has a 30-round magazine. The magazine was fully loaded but the gun didn’t have a round in the chamber.”

The woman was on the phone with emergency dispatch when her husband came out into the family room with the rifle, the sheriff said. The moments that followed were captured in the 911 recording shared by the department during the news conference.

She was on the phone with the dispatcher when gunshots can be heard in the background.

The man saw a flashlight that was moving toward their back door as his wife was speaking, the sheriff said, and he fired.

In the backyard was a 33-year-old pool cleaner with Bay Area Pool Techs, the sheriff said.

The company had been cleaning the couple’s pool since they moved in over three years ago, and this cleaner had been their pool tech for at least six months, Gualtieri said.

The cleaner had never come to clean the pool at night, the sheriff said. But on that night, he arrived at the couple’s house for their regular pool cleaning around 9 p.m.

The man fired two rounds from his rifle into the backyard from behind his couch through closed blinds, Gualtieri said.

The shots missed the cleaner, but he was hit in the back with glass and shrapnel, the sheriff said.

He ran from the lanai, but with the blinds closed, the man thought someone was still outside, the sheriff said.

Almost a minute after the cleaner ran from the pool deck, as seen on video footage shared by the sheriff’s office, the man emptied the magazine of his rifle into the backyard, shooting a total of 30 rounds in about 90 seconds.

“Only the first two rounds were fired when (the cleaner) was on the pool deck,” the sheriff said, “the remaining rounds, he was actually gone.”

The cleaner told deputies that he had been cleaning pools in the neighborhood but was running behind schedule, causing him to reach the house in the dark. The sheriff said he didn’t knock on the door or alert the couple that he was at their home.

The sheriff said the cleaner seems to wave toward the window on the back of the house, according to the surveillance video, but since the blinds were shut, the coupleHocevars would not have seen him.

The cleaner was transported to the hospital with minor injuries and was released that night, Gualtieri said.

Under Florida’s “stand your ground law,” the homeowner has the right to fire at someone on his property if he believes they pose a threat to him or his wife, Gualtieri said.

“There is no crime that is committed,” Gualtieri said. “It’s probably one of those things that I would call lawful but awful.”

Gualtieri said luckily no one else was hurt because deputies found stray bullets on a shuffleboard court behind the couple’s home.

The incident is reminiscent of other recent shootings across the country in residential communities caused by mistaken identity.

In April, a high school cheerleader was shot in a Texas parking lot after a teammate accidentally opened the wrong car door, McClatchy News previously reported.

In Kansas City, a 16-year-old was shot by a homeowner after he went to the wrong house to pick up his sibling, McClatchy News previously reported.

In the same week, a 20-year-old woman was shot by a homeowner when she pulled into the driveway by mistake, McClatchy News previously reported, and she later died.

Dunedin is about 25 miles west of Tampa.

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