Man Opens Fire On Homeless Family Sleeping In Their Car

A 21-year-old man has been arrested after he reportedly opened fire on a homeless family sleeping in their car at a park in Tampa last week.

According to the Tampa Police Department, Christopher Stamat Jr from Florida faces six felony charges for the attack, including four counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, one count of second-degree attempted murder, and one count of shooting into a vehicle after the shooting incident on Wednesday on the 2200 block of N Oregon Avenue in a parking lot across from the Martin Luther King Jr. Recreation Complex, reports said.

Tampa Police Chief Mary O'Connor informed about the police arresting Stamat on Saturday for felony marijuana possession and was later released.

He was then re-arrested later that afternoon after making the case for the shooting charge, O'Connor explained.

In a written statement she said, “Our community as a whole can sleep easier tonight knowing the suspect linked to this monstrous, random act of violence is no longer free to prey on innocent people.”

"You take a gun, and you unload it on a family. We can't really sit back and try to figure out the 'why' on that. There's really zero tolerance for that kind of behavior."

Stamat was identified after investigating a black 2-door 300 series 2012 BMW that was seen on multiple surveillance videos near the area at the time of the shooting. Police found the vehicle in the garage of a home in Tampa on Thursday and learned Stamat was the owner.

Stamat is said to have told the police that he was the only person who had driven the car around N Oregon Avenue on the morning of the shooting.

Around 4:30 a.m. the father, an adult male in his 30s noticed the headlights of a sedan that pulled in front of the family's rental car. On hearing, shots fired he yelled for his pregnant wife and children to get down. More than a dozen shots were fired at the family’s vehicle before the suspect sped off. The mother was struck in the head but suffered non-life-threatening injuries and was recovering at a hospital. The father and children were unharmed.