About 12 hours after a shooting that left two people dead in Tampa's Ybor City entertainment district, you wouldn't know what happened unless you made your way west on East Seventh Avenue to 17th Street.
You would have had to turn around there. Yellow police tape and Tampa Police cars blocked the road, physical reminders that something terrible had happened.
The street was littered with broken glass and other debris, and those yellow, numbered evidence counters were everywhere. Tables were flipped on their sides, and here and there police were bagging up evidence of the crimes.
Inside the stores, bars, tattoo shops and restaurants, business was thin.
Devante Hammond manages Mikeeo's Cheesesteaks at Ybor City Food Mart. When he spoke to WUSF he said business was so bad, he was thinking of closing early. He had seen only three customers that day.
Rick Bolivar, the chef and manager at Stone Soup Company, says the weekend before Halloween is a big one for the bars that line East Seventh Avenue.
He said it's almost as big as Gasparilla, the pirate-fest Tampa has hosted nearly every year since 1904.
Bolivar said more police should have been there to handle the crowd.
"Ybor's known for that and they should've thought more thoroughly about having a better police presence out here," Bolivar said. "And from what I understand, I had literally two cops sitting in cars, five blocks away. And I'm like, that makes no sense to us."
"Usually, on normal nights, it's police everywhere. Last night, it was barely any, so it was definitely a big lack."Devante Hammond, manager of Mideeo's Cheesesteaks
He was not the only one from an Ybor City business who mentioned a lack of police the night before. One business owner, who didn't want to speak on the record, said it was "Super Bowl" sized crowds.
The business owner said if there had been more cops there, the shooting deaths might have been prevented.
Hammond also said he didn't notice a lot of police Saturday night.
"Usually, on normal nights, it's police everywhere," Hammond said. "Last night, it was barely any, so it was definitely a big lack."
During a news conference earlier Sunday, Tampa Police Chief Lee Bercaw defended the number of officers on the street at the time of the shooting.
"Again, the number of officers isn't a problem." Bercaw said. "It's an isolated dispute between two people that turned into a gun violence when it shouldn't have done that."
Tampa Mayor Jane Castor, who previously served as the city's police chief, also cited Ybor City's low crime rate and said the area is safe, in spite of Sunday's violence.
"I don't know that the entertainment venues are an issue in that particular area," Castor said. "I know that a lot of the business owners have stepped forward to do what they can to make Ybor safer. It is just these particular incidents.
"If you look at the overall crime rate in Ybor City, it is very, very low. It's just unfortunate that these late-night, early-morning incidents are occurring, where you have disputes that in the past may have been settled in a verbal argument and at the very worst a physical fight, and now people aren't hesitating to pull out guns and shoot and not only kill innocent individuals, but hurt bystanders as well."
Ybor City is no stranger to violence.
But Paris Reed, who manages Carmine's restaurant on the weekends, said she was shocked by the shootings.
"Of course, like it's going to be busier," Reed said. "It's Halloween weekend and everyone's out and about, so I was surprised to hear what was happening, because I feel like we've been pretty, like low-key for the most part.
"I don't feel like we've had anything drastic like that in a while, so it's just like, more so shocking."
For many years, Ybor City hosted a Halloween festival known as Guavaween, which drew 250,000 people to East Seventh Avenue at its height. That ended several years ago.
