Man who once killed a man in a road rage incident, gets killed in another one

After a traffic mishap in Florida’s Hillsborough County on Wednesday, Gary Lynn Durham got out of his car and exchanged heated words with another driver which ended with Durham dying from a gunshot wound on the side of the road, police said.

Police found that Durham had recently been released from prison for killing a man in road rage confrontation in 2001. Police say Durham punched a 48-year-old cancer survivor,
Tim Gibbs, in the face at an intersection as the two men argued 15 years ago in Tampa, Florida and the fatal punch killed the man. Durham was subsequently convicted of manslaughter and sentenced in 2002. He  spent the next 10 years behind bars.

The deadly confrontation in October 2001 happened on the city’s north side. A witness told investigators that Durham cut Tim Gibbs off outside a 7-Eleven store.

“At that point, the victim drove off and ended up in a parking lot of a business at 10001 N. Armenia, where he was known by fellow friends,” a police report states. “The suspect pulled up in his vehicle and approached the victim. The victim was seen balling up his fist, but the suspect punched him once and caused the victim to fall backwards onto the concrete pavement.”

Investigators say Gibbs hit his head on the pavement after being punched by Durham. He died days later from brain injuries and a skull fracture, police said at the time. Durham was charged with manslaughter and ultimately convicted. He was sentenced to 11 1/2 years in prison, according to NBC affiliate WFLA. He was on probation when he had the altercation with Padgett in Plant City, east of Tampa.

After his release, the judge also required Durham to take anger management classes. Now, he is dead in a similar incident.

“It’s a shame that he didn’t learn his lesson while in jail,” Nancy Gibbs, Tim Gibbs’s widow, told the Tampa Bay Times after learning Durham had died in a road rage incident.

“I’m just glad I don’t have to worry about him or running into him somewhere. It’s ironic that he died in the same way as my husband.”

Durham was killed on Wednesday afternoon. Sheriff’s deputies said they were called to Martin Luther King Boulevard in the Tampa suburbs about a shooting and when they got there, they found Durham lying dead in the street, with Robert Padgett standing nearby.

“Durham and Padgett were involved in a traffic road rage incident,” the sheriff’s office said in a news release. The altercation, sheriff’s officials said, “ended with Padgett firing at least one round from a handgun that struck and killed Durham.”

Padgett has not yet been charged with a crime, and investigators say he’s been cooperative.

Durham’s wife, Heather, told the Tampa Bay Times that they got married in 2015, after he was released on probation.

“Just because he went to jail, that did not define who he was,” she told the newspaper. “He wasn’t this angry person who went around angry all the time. People only see the side that the media spreads. They don’t know him like I did or his family did.”