Tampa police arrest man on murder charge in Seminole Heights stabbing

Tampa police have arrested a man in connection to a fatal stabbing behind a shuttered Wendy’s restaurant in Seminole Heights this month.

Police on Saturday arrested Eddy Caron, 57, of Tampa on a first-degree murder charge in the June 12 stabbing of David A. Malzone, 52, records show.

According to Caron’s arrest affidavit, police were called to 1501 E. Hillsborough Ave. about 5:15 p.m. that day about a man, later determined to be Malzone, bleeding from his neck behind the Wendy’s. The company’s website lists that location as “temporarily closed.”

Malzone died at the scene. An autopsy found he’d been stabbed in the neck and chest and that he died from stab wounds to his jugular vein and carotid arteries.

A witness told police she walked through the parking lot on the way to a nearby convenience store and saw Malzone alive and seated behind the Wendy’s. A man who fit Caron’s description was standing nearby, the affidavit states.

When the woman walked back through the parking lot about eight minutes later, another witness asked if she’d seen the attack. She then saw Malzone lying on the ground bleeding in the same area where she’d seen him sitting minutes earlier.

Another witness said he was riding in the back of a vehicle on Giddens Avenue when he saw an older man attacking another man and then ride away on a bicycle, heading east on Giddens. Police obtained surveillance video that corroborated the witness’s account.

Other surveillance video showed a man, later determined to be Caron, riding a bicycle up to the 2K Express convenience store across North 15th Street from the Wendy’s about 4:34 p.m. The video shows Caron buying a Heineken beer and then riding back to the Wendy’s parking lot a few minutes later and remaining out of view until about 5:06 p.m., when he reappears and heads south on 15th Street. The affidavit notes that he is carrying a backpack and his bicycle has a distinctive feature: deer antlers on the handlebars.

Other video shows Caron walking the same bike east on Giddens Avenue at 5:07 p.m. and at about 5:10 p.m., laying his bike down and walking into a break in the fence leading to the area of the Wendy’s parking lot where Malzone would later be found dead, the affidavit states. About 10 seconds later, the video shows Caron emerging from the break in the fence and riding his bike east on Giddens.

Investigators found a crushed Heineken beer can at the scene that had Caron’s DNA on it, according to the affidavit.

Police also reviewed body camera video from a May 15 trespassing call in which Caron has the same bike with the deer antlers and the same backpack in the surveillance video from the 2K Express store.

The affidavit doesn’t say if police have determined a possible motive in the case.

Police arrested Caron on the 4100 block of East 10th Avenue. He was being held Monday without bond in Hillsborough’s Falkenburg Road jail.

Records show Caron was sentenced to a year in state prison after he was found guilty of aggravated assault with a weapon in Hillsborough County in 2019. Details about that case were not immediately available on Monday.