Just that one phone call LOL !! THEY ALREADY KNOW

17-year-old star athlete's 2007 shooting death remains unsolved

JOSÉ PATIÑO GIRONA The Tampa Tribune
Published: April 23, 2012   |   Updated: March 19, 2013 at 04:06 AM

TAMPA -

Not a day passes that Lucy Mills doesn't visit her grandson's grave. She goes there to pray, reflect and be near her "baby." She makes certain the grave is clean and the flowers are in place.

"It helps me feel better," Mills said. "I need to be able to see him sometimes. When (the pain) gets really, really bad, I need to be there with him.

"You sit there and think about your baby laying in that grave," Mills said. "And sometimes I just want to lay on top of it and hug my baby."

Wednesday marks five years since the shooting death of her grandson Cedric "C.J." Mills, a star football player at Jefferson High School. The pain hasn't eased in the last half-decade.

At 4 p.m. today, the family will celebrate C.J.'s life during a memorial gathering at his gravesite at Rest Haven Memorial Park.

C.J. was 17 and a promising linebacker at Jefferson who had caught the attention of college coaches. He had been an honorable mention on the Class 4A All-State football team, and the University of Miami had shown interest in him.

Family and friends described him as a cheerful, considerate and determined young man. Raised by Mills, his paternal grandmother, until he was 10, he had taped a list of 18 goals next to his bedroom door.

Among them: earning a college degree, playing in the National Football League, helping his family financially and making his grandmother proud.

He died before he could accomplish most of his goals, shot in the driveway of his family's home at 4219 W. Laurel St. just before 6:30 p.m. on April 25, 2007. The case remains unsolved — a constant stress for the family and a puzzle for Tampa police detectives.

His stepmother, Flo Mills, remains shaken five years later.

She had left the house to take her daughter to work and run an errand when she got the call that her stepson had been shot. She rushed home to find him at the doorstep.

He had tried to get inside the house after being shot, she said.

As she held him in her lap, he said, " 'I love you, Ma,' " Flo Mills said. The memory haunts her still.

"The hardest thing for me are the last words he said to me," Flo Mills said.

The family is frustrated that the daylight shooting hasn't been solved. Lucy Mills' doctor has told her to concentrate on other things and not let the slaying affect her health.

"How can you?" asked Lucy Mills, 60. "That was my baby. So how can you focus on something else when my baby was shot down like he was nothing? And nobody seems to be able to do anything."

Flo Mills thinks someone was watching C.J. the day of the killing. She left the house with her younger daughter. Her husband, Vidal Mills, who is C.J.'s father, left for practice with an arena football team. He had invited C.J. to come along, but the teenager had plans with friends, Flo Mills said.

C.J. and his stepsister stayed behind. They were sitting on a car talking and taking photos with his cellphone. Flo Mills' daughter ran inside to get her phone.

A four-door silver Chrysler Sebring with tinted windows pulled up to the Carver City home. Two men carrying handguns and wearing bandanas that covered their faces got out of the car and shot C.J.

Witness descriptions of the killer were generic: black men about 5 feet 9 or 5 feet 10 inches tall, weighing 160 to 190 pounds.

C.J.'s white LG Chocolate-brand cellphone and a round gold religious medallion about 1½ inches in diameter were taken from him after the shooting and have never been recovered. The chain that held the medallion he wore was found in the yard, and he still had cash in his pockets, Flo Mills said.

The family speculates it was a targeted hit. They think the shooters took the phone to prevent him from calling for help and the medallion to show they had killed him, Lucy Mills said.

"When they take a life, they think they've really done something great," Lucy Mills said. "And they don't realize that they are cowards. You use a gun to try to prove that you're something big. A gun makes you out as a coward."

Mills' family remains disillusioned with the investigation. Lucy Mills said she used to call detectives but stopped. She was tired of hearing detectives had made no progress, she said.

The shooters "are going to brag, and you still can't find nothing," Lucy Mills said. "That's what gets me. … You can't find a car, you can't find a gun, you can't find a phone, you can't find a medallion, you can't find people."

Tampa police Detective Chuck Massucci said the agency reviews unsolved homicides several times a year. C.J. Mills' case isn't forgotten, he said.

"These cases, they stick with us," Massucci said. "They become our pattern of thought. You can't escape the tragedy.

"We know what they lost. They had a promising young man. It's nothing but disappointment for us that we can't close the case for them."

In the past five years, detectives have received leads, but none has led to an arrest, Massucci said. As time has passed, the leads have become "more sporadic," he said.

But detectives haven't lost hope, he said.

A high-profile slaying generates conversation. The shooters could have bragged to someone or talked to rid themselves of guilt, Massucci said.

"There are people in the community that know exactly what happened to C.J. Mills and are unwilling or afraid to come forward to law enforcement," Massucci said. "Any case can be closed with one telephone call," he said. "Any case can be closed with one new lead."

Family members and friends said they pointed police to people worth interviewing. There was the young man C.J. said had stolen his stereo system from his car. C.J. got his equipment back and they later got into a fistfight.

They also investigated a man who C.J.'s dad confronted at a McDonald's in 2008. Vidal Mills — who spent a year on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers' practice squad and was a former linebacker with the arena football team Tampa Bay Storm — punched and kicked the man because he thought he knew something about his son's death.

Detectives interviewed the man, but he was never named a suspect. Vidal Mills was arrested after attacking the man; he eventually pleaded no contest and was sentenced to a year of probation.

The pain of C.J.'s death stretches beyond the family, affecting friends, teammates and classmates, neighbors and parents.

Former Jefferson High football coach Mike Fenton said the goal of the football season after the shooting was to keep the players united and focused. Emotionally, it was a difficult year that ended with a .500 record, he said.

"It was the longest year of coaching I had," Fenton said. "The stress of it."

Fenton is no longer the coach at Jefferson but assists the football team at Tampa Catholic High School. Every time he goes to Tampa Catholic, he passes a bus stop bench featuring a public service ad asking for help in solving the slaying of C.J. Mills.

"You can't close a chapter until that person is found," Fenton said. "I can't imagine what his family is going through.

"You can deal with what you know," he said. "It's dealing with the unknown that bothers me."

C.J. still lives on the walls in Lucy Mills' home on Cypress Street. A photo of 7-year-old C.J. in a football uniform. A portrait taken on his last Easter Sunday. His framed No. 8 Jefferson High football jersey.

For the family, the images serve as a reminder of their loss. But even with no clear resolution in the case after five years, they remain hopeful that someday an arrest will be made.

"We would have closure. We would know why," Lucy Mills said. "I know it wouldn't bring him back, but it would help us."

"I just pray that one day justice will be served," Flo Mills said. "I don't care when it is. I'm not going to give up. I'm just hoping."

jpatino@tampatrib.com (813) 259-7659