© 2026 ABC News

Police say catching killer 'is personal'

\"For our cops this is personal,\" Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn told ABC News. \"We're going to get this person.\"

\"PHOTO:
Tampa Police Department/Facebook
PHOTO: The Tampa Police Department gave a press conference about the unsolved murders that have taken place in the Seminole Heights neighborhood of Tampa, Oct. 20, 2017.
>

Earlier in the week, Tampa Police Chief Brian Dugan told ABC News that he has advised cops during a briefing that, 'Everybody out there is a potential suspect or a potential victim and [you] need to think like that,'\" he said.

\"We have someone terrorizing the neighborhood,\" he said, vowing that his fellow cops and FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) agents are committed to arresting the killer or killers.

\"We're not going to be held hostage by whoever's doing this,\" he said.

Surveillance video footage of a person of interest circulated by police shows a slender figure wearing a windbreaker who is seen walking at night while repeatedly checking a mobile device.

\"Whoever is doing it is able to vanish very quickly,\" Dugan said.

Pitt said that the killer's random savagery has confounded her.

\"There's just some evil people in the world that's just randomly killing people,\" she said. \"It doesn't make any sense to me.\"

And she is not able to explain it to her son.

\"I try not to explain this,\" she said. \"'Cause I don’t want him to be fretful as he grows up and too scared to even come outside.\"

ABC News' Victor Oquendo contributed to this report.

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