{"id":347500,"date":"2026-07-21T17:21:57","date_gmt":"2026-07-21T17:21:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/347500\/"},"modified":"2026-07-21T17:21:57","modified_gmt":"2026-07-21T17:21:57","slug":"trial-date-set-for-former-tampa-district-5-candidate-after-pulling-gun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/347500\/","title":{"rendered":"Trial date set for former Tampa District 5 candidate after pulling gun"},"content":{"rendered":"

TAMPA, Fla. \u2014 Former Hillsborough County District 5 candidate Elvis Piggott was in court on Tuesday for a pretrial hearing on charges stemming from an incident at a candidate forum last year, where he pulled a gun.<\/p>\n

Piggott is charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and improper exhibition of a firearm, according to court documents. <\/p>\n

Piggott told Tampa Bay 28’s Erik Waxler<\/a> he pulled the weapon in self-defense after being confronted by family members of candidate Naya Young<\/a> following the forum at the Tampa Heights Community Center on Oct. 9.<\/p>\n

The forum featured Young and Thomas Scott, who were facing each other in the District 5 special runoff election<\/a> to fill the seat left vacant after Council Member Gwen Henderson\u2019s death in June.<\/p>\n

Tampa Bay 28 was at the pre-trial hearing on July 21, where the judge set another pre-trial hearing date for Sept. 15 and a trial start date for Sept. 28.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

‘It’s either eat or pay bills’: Florida families desperate for answers after losing SNAP benefits to fraud<\/p>\n

Florida families are losing hundreds of dollars in SNAP benefits to fraud, with multiple victims in the Tampa Bay area saying unauthorized charges on their accounts are being traced to the same California address \u2014 and the state is offering no way to get that money back.<\/p>\n

Families say SNAP scammers are stealing food benefits with no reimbursement<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TAMPA, Fla. \u2014 Former Hillsborough County District 5 candidate Elvis Piggott was in court on Tuesday for a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":347501,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[3797,7887,608,276,135,5910,108336,3670,137,136,208],"class_list":["post-347500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-candidate-forum","tag-district-5","tag-elvis-piggott","tag-hillsborough-county","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-bay-28","tag-tampa-bay-28-news","tag-tampa-bay-local-news","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news","tag-wfts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347500","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=347500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347500\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/347501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=347500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=347500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=347500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}