Family of Hillsborough teen shot by friend loses second child in possible homicide
A former Hillsborough County family whose son was fatally shot by a friend in the home of a Tampa police officer five years ago is now mourning the loss of another child in what authorities have deemed a possible homicide case.
Ava Hulett, 19, died at her family’s home in Estero, near Fort Myers, hours after she was released from the hospital after an incident at a bar, and Lee County detectives have launched an investigation into the death, according to Anthony Rickman, a Tampa attorney representing the family.
Ava Hulett is the sister of Bradley Hulett, who was a 15-year-old student at Newsome High School in Lithia in 2019 when he was inadvertently shot by a friend while hanging out at the home of another friend — the son of a Tampa police officer — in FishHawk Ranch, a community in Lithia. The friend who shot Bradley was later charged with manslaughter, and the Tampa police officer was disciplined for keeping the gun in an unsafe condition.
Brad and Meagan Hulett, Ava and Bradley’s parents, were outspoken about their son’s death from the beginning. They moved from Lithia to Estero about two years ago and are now waiting for answers in their daughter’s death, Rickman said. Behind Bradley, she was the second-oldest of their five children.
“No parent should ever outlive their children, and these two parents are outliving two of their children, and it’s just horrific that they’re going through this again,” said Rickman, who has represented the family since Bradley was shot.
Ava Hulett was hanging out with friends at Pelican Larry’s Raw Bar and Grill in Fort Myers early on June 15 when she and at least one of her friends had to be picked up by an ambulance and taken to the hospital, Rickman said. Ava was released from the hospital later that day.
About 12:20 p.m. that day, she was found unresponsive at a home, according to a Lee County Sheriff’s Office incident report. Hulett’s name, the location of the call and other details are redacted from the report, but Rickman confirmed the woman was Ava Hulett and she was at her parents’ home in Estero.
A deputy tried lifesaving measures until paramedics arrived and took over, according to the report. The woman was pronounced dead at 12:31 p.m. The report notes that a homicide detective took over the investigation.
A sheriff’s office news release said deputies responded to Pelican Larry’s shortly after midnight on June 15 for a medical assistance call. Later in the day, Lee County deputies responded to a home where a 19-year-old woman had died. Detectives learned she was a patron at Pelican Larry’s earlier in the day.
The sheriff’s office declined to release the woman’s name, citing Marsy’s Law.
“At this time, there is no indication that the staff at the business or its operations caused harm to their patrons,” the news release said.
A spokesperson for the sheriff’s office, Capt. Anita Iriarte, said the detective who took over the investigation is part of the Drug Homicide Investigation Team. An autopsy was performed but investigators were waiting for toxicology results to determine Hulett’s cause and manner of death, Iriarte said.
In a Facebook post on Wednesday, Meagan Hulett addressed her daughter’s death, saying it was not a suicide and that the family does not believe she knowingly took a substance that killed her.
“She was conscious after the event and even said to me, ‘I don’t want to die,’” the post said. “She was scared.”
After Ava Hulett was released from the hospital, her mother brought her home and she went to bed, the post said. When her mother went to check on her, she was not breathing. Her parents called 911 and Brad Hulett performed CPR until first responders arrived.
The post said the family couldn’t say more, citing a police investigation that involved “other overdoses reported at the bar” where Ava was hanging out that night. The post asked for privacy as the family mourned and the investigation into Ava’s death continued. Funeral services were scheduled for Friday.
Bradley Hulett and three classmates, all of them sophomores at Newsome, were hanging out one day in December 2019 at a home in FishHawk Ranch. The boy who lived there picked the lock to his parents’ bedroom, where his father — Tampa police Detective Edwin Perez — kept his personal gun on a high shelf in the bathroom. He told his friends his father always made sure the gun wasn’t loaded.
But there was still a round in the chamber when Christopher “Ramsey” Bevan, then 15, got hold of the gun to show Bradley Hulett, court records said. The gun discharged, fatally wounding Hulett in the head. Bevan was charged as an adult.
Two years later, in November 2021, then-Hillsborough State Attorney Andrew Warren stood with Meagan and Brad Hulett at a news conference in downtown Tampa to announce that Bevan would enter a pretrial diversion program and the charge would be dropped if he successfully completed all of the program’s conditions.
“Bradley’s parents told us they were less concerned with prison and more concerned with repairing the bond they had with Ramsey, and they hoped Ramsey would be able to rebuild his own life going forward,” Warren said during the news conference at Joe Chillura Courthouse Square.
Warren also said that, during the course of the investigation, prosecutors learned about a design defect in the same make and model of the handgun involved in Bradley Hulett’s death. A number of lawsuits have been filed nationwide against the manufacturers of the Sig Sauer P320 pistol. They allege that the defect allows the gun to fire without the trigger being pulled.
The Huletts have filed their own wrongful-death lawsuit against the manufacturer, alleging that it shares blame for their son’s death. The case is still pending.
“We never wanted to see Ramsey spend a lengthy amount of time in jail,” Meagan Hulett told reporters during the news conference. “All we ever wanted from the beginning was for all who were involved to take responsibility for their part in the death of our son.”
Bevan, now 19, tested positive for marijuana last July, violating a term of the intervention program, but a judge allowed him to reenter the program for a term that now ends in 2026, court records show. In October, his attorney filed a motion asking the court to allow Bevan to move in with his sister in Kissimmee so he could attend in-person classes at Valencia College starting this spring. The motion said the assistant state attorney on the case and Bevan’s probation officer did not object to the request. It’s unclear from court records if the request was granted.
Tampa police Detective Edwin Perez was cleared of criminal wrongdoing in the case in 2020, but after an internal affairs review, then-police Chief Brian Dugan gave Perez a 40-hour unpaid suspension after determining he failed to properly secure his gun.
