{"id":183885,"date":"2026-03-09T08:57:40","date_gmt":"2026-03-09T08:57:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/183885\/"},"modified":"2026-03-09T08:57:40","modified_gmt":"2026-03-09T08:57:40","slug":"man-accused-of-trying-to-kill-victim-with-hammer-said-god-told-him-to-lpd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/183885\/","title":{"rendered":"Man accused of trying to kill victim with hammer, said ‘God’ told him to: LPD"},"content":{"rendered":"

LARGO, FLA \u2014 Largo police arrested a man on Wednesday after he was accused of trying to kill an 84-year-old victim with a hammer, saying “God” told him to do it, according to a report.<\/p>\n

The Largo Police Department (LPD) charged Brian Rye, 55, of Largo with attempted first-degree murder.<\/p>\n

According to an arresting affidavit, Rye said he was told by his \u201cfather (God)\u201d to kill the victim who he claimed was a pedophile.<\/p>\n

Rye and the victim did not know each other, the report stated.<\/p>\n

Rye went to the man\u2019s home and knocked on the door. When the victim opened the door, Rye tossed a liquid in the man\u2019s face to blind him. <\/p>\n

Once blinded, Rye attacked the victim with a hammer he took from his toolbox, police officials said.<\/p>\n

The man suffered wounds to his eyes, arms and head.<\/p>\n

Rye told police, \u201cI was going to kill him,\u201d the affidavit stated.<\/p>\n

Rye was additionally charged with burglary with battery, aggravated battery, criminal mischief and resisting an officer without violence.<\/p>\n

Rye was booked into the Pinellas County Jail.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Hernando County teacher suffers life-threatening medical emergency<\/p>\n

Rob Strasser was diagnosed with CVST. At first, he thought he had sinus problems until he experienced the worse headache of his life.<\/p>\n

Hernando County teacher suffers life-threatening medical emergency<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LARGO, FLA \u2014 Largo police arrested a man on Wednesday after he was accused of trying to kill…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":183886,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[205,7774,22140,9696,4085,596,135,3670,137,136,208],"class_list":{"0":"post-183885","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tampa","8":"tag-abc-action-news","9":"tag-attempted-murder","10":"tag-god","11":"tag-hammer","12":"tag-largo","13":"tag-pinellas-county","14":"tag-tampa","15":"tag-tampa-bay-local-news","16":"tag-tampa-headlines","17":"tag-tampa-news","18":"tag-wfts"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183885","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=183885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183885\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/183886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}