Police know who shot this gay man to death. They still haven’t arrested him.

The Florida man who fatally shot a gay dog owner earlier this month at a Tampa area park has still not been arrested. The shooter claims he acted in self-defense, but friends say he had been harassing the victim, 52-year-old John Walter Lay, for months with threats and homophobic slurs.

Little is known about what took place at the West Dog Park just before 8 a.m. on February 2. According to the Tampa Bay Times, a nine-page investigative report it received from the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office (HCSO) was almost entirely redacted. Lay’s sister, Sabrena Lay Hughes, told the paper that the family learned from Lay’s death certificate that he was shot in the chest. But the sheriff’s office provided few other details.

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“At this time, there are no impending charges. However, the investigation will be turned over to the State Attorney’s Office for final review,” HCSO said in a brief press release on February 6, four days after the shooting. “All parties involved have been identified and there is no danger to the public.”

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Last Thursday, the sheriff’s office confirmed to the Tampa Bay Times that the shooter was 65-year-old Gerald Declan Radford, who goes by “Dec.” As of Friday, local ABC station WFTS reported that Radford had not been arrested or charged with any crime.

In a text message, Radford told the Times that he was “attacked.”

“I defended myself,” he wrote. “End of story.”

But Lay’s friends and family cast doubt on Radford’s account, saying Lay, who went by “Walt,” had been going out of his way to avoid Radford after enduring months of consistent harassment.

“In my opinion, there’s no way in hell this is really self-defense,” Albert Darlington, Lay’s friend and landlord, told the Times. “For over a year, Dec has done nothing but harass Walt. He screams and hollers and calls him a fa***t every time he gets to the dog park. He’ll sit there and he’ll say, ‘I’d like to punch him right in the f**king mouth’ … and it has gotten worse and worse and worse.”

Darlington claims that Radford would even try to bump into Lay as he walked by.

“I even said to Dec, ‘What are you trying to do, harass [Lay] until he jumps so you can kick his ass?’” Darlington recalled. “And all he would do was smile and look at me.”

Another friend, Andy Prince, told WFTS that Radford made no secret of the fact that he carried a gun. “And he also said that he hates gay people. Unprompted,” Prince said.

Both the Tampa Bay Times and WFTS report that Radford frequently posted anti-LGBTQ+ content on Facebook.

Hughes said her brother would move to other parts of the park to avoid Radford.

Friends said Lay was reluctant to get police involved in the situation. They advised him to start documenting his encounters with Radford, and on February 1, the day before he was killed, Lay sent a video to one friend following a run-in with Radford.

“So, this morning while I’m walking —we’re the only two here — and he comes up to me and screams at me, ‘You’re going to die, you’re going to die,’ and I asked him to just leave me alone, and so far he has,” Lay said in the clip.

Darlington said that hours after the February 2 shooting, Radford sent him a text message including a photo of himself in which Radford appeared to have a bruise under one eye and an abrasion on his forehead.

“I’m so sorry to tell you, Walt attacked me and I had to defend myself,” Radford wrote. “I never thought he would go for me. I really sorry. I really had no choice he was too crazy.”

“My first impression was, this looks like you’re building an excuse for something that already happened,” said Darlington. “Little did I know that Walt was already dead.”

Another friend, Will Meyer, described his shock when he arrived at the park on February 2 to see 15 to 20 police vehicles and Radford walking around free.

“We looked around at each other and I thought, this guy just killed our friend and he is not in handcuffs?” Meyer said. “It was unbelievable to us.”

According to WFTS, police have not followed up with any of the frequent park visitors the station spoke with.

“It is impossible to see this senseless death outside the context of the hateful anti-LGBTQ rhetoric from the highest office in our state and the emboldened bigotry it has inspired,” Equality Florida wrote of Lay’s shooting in a Friday X post. The LGBTQ+ rights organization also blasted the Florida lawmakers’ efforts to roll back gun restrictions in the state, and added that it has been in contact with law enforcement. “The community needs to hear from our leaders about the values they stand for in the face of hate and be assured that this investigation is not hampered by bias,” the organization wrote.