Detectives identified Lavardis Howard, 29, as the primary suspect during the investigation. Howard was released from Florida State Prison in October 2025.<\/p>\n
TAMPA, Fla. \u2014 The Hillsborough County Sheriff\u2019s Office has arrested an eight-time convicted felon following an investigation into gang activity in the Grant Park area.<\/p>\n
Detectives identified 29-year-old Lavardis Howard as a primary suspect during an ongoing probe into the “Young Godz” gang. Howard, who was released from Florida State Prison in October 2025, became the subject of an arrest warrant after a Feb. 19 domestic incident.<\/p>\n
On Feb. 24, the Sheriff\u2019s Office Gang Unit served a search warrant at Howard\u2019s Tampa residence, locating two pistols, one of which was reported stolen, along with about two pounds of marijuana, ammunition, mushrooms, and marijuana wax. A second warrant was issued and Howard was taken into custody a few days later in Progress Village.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis arrest is the result of proactive investigative work targeting gang activity in our community,\u201d Sheriff Chad Chronister said.<\/p>\n
The investigation remains ongoing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Detectives identified Lavardis Howard, 29, as the primary suspect during the investigation. Howard was released from Florida State…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":179370,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[135,137,136],"class_list":["post-179369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179369\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/179370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}