On July 24, 1981 Tampa Police Detective Gerald Rauft, 38, and another narcotics officer entered a small block house at 1410 N. 29th Street on an undercover buy of 100 pounds of marijuana when the house erupted in gunfire. The eight-year police veteran died from shots to his chest from a snub-nosed .38 caliber revolver. Officer Robert Ulricksen, 27, recovered from wounds to his abdomen and right arm.

Link to Photo of Murderer Carlos Bello
http://www.myfoxtampabay.com/myfox/p...Y&pageId=3.2.1

The suspect, Carlos Bello, was wounded and taken into custody with three others. He was a Cuban refugee who had been in the United States about a year before this incident took place. Bello was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and it took six years before he was deemed fit to stand trial. In 1987 Bello was convicted and sentenced to the electric chair. Two years later his sentence was overturned due to competency issues. On numerous occasions through 2005, Carlos Bello was found to be incompetent to stand trial. However, suspicion grew over the years that Bello was exaggerating the symptoms of his mental illness to avoid punishment. In 2004 reports from the Florida State Hospital in Chattahoochee made a case for malingering. Today there are two doctors who have found that Carlos Bello is competent to stand trial.

Tomorrow (Friday), September 26th, convicted murderer Carlos Bello will again enter a court room here in Tampa to have a judge rule on his competency to stand trial. The State will be represented by Prosecutor Darrel Dirks (who helped prosecute Carlos Bello in the 1980s) and Bello will be represented by the Public Defender’s Office. The Public Defender’s Office is expected to argue that Carlos Bello remains incompetent.

Your Tampa PBA will be present during these proceedings and any Tampa police officers interested in attending are welcome to as well. We expect there to be future court hearings in which your attendance will be even more important. As always, we will keep you informed of the outcome. Court information, as we have it, is listed below. Some details of this development were obtained from media sources such as Fox 13(myfoxtampabay.com) and the St. Petersburg Times (tampabay.com).

The Honorable Ronald N. Ficarrotta
800 E. Kennedy Blvd., Tampa, Florida 33602
Room 122-Annex
Felony, Division G
Courtroom #12
Start: 0900 - 1000 hours
(813) 272-7139