Bradenton man shot Tropicana coworker and kidnapped another. He’s sentenced
A judge sentenced a Bradenton man to life in prison Tuesday for shooting a co-worker and kidnapping another after an argument at the Tropicana plant.
Demitrius Tyrone Bell, 51, received a mandatory life sentence in the Florida Department of Corrections after a jury convicted him in March of attempted first-degree murder, armed kidnapping, aggravated assault with a firearm and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, according to a news release from the Bradenton Police Department.
The sentence was enhanced under Florida’s three-time violent felony offender law, which made life in prison mandatory.
The charges stem from a June 2023 shooting at the Tropicana Bradenton plant, according to police. Investigators said Bell got into an argument with a 39-year-old male coworker after his shift. Bell later returned to the facility with a gun, shot the man in the torso and forced a female coworker to leave with him at gunpoint, according to police.
Bell held the woman captive for nearly two days before releasing her uninjured in Tampa, the Bradenton Herald previously reported. Police opened a missing persons investigation and said the woman had not gone with Bell willingly.
Investigators say Bell remained on the run for nearly a year. In April 2024, detectives say they received a tip that he had returned to Bradenton.
But when officers attempted to arrest him, police said Bell ran. The Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office Aviation Unit later spotted him on the roof of a storage facility in the 2800 block of Manatee Avenue East near the Braden River. Bradenton police arrested him shortly after.
Jurors convicted Bell after a two-day March trial at the Manatee County Judicial Center in downtown Bradenton. Circuit Judge Teri Dees sentenced him to life in prison, according to court records.
