Family quarrel turns deadly for "Friends Forever''

  THONOTOSASSA –- Joey McCullen and Devin Lively were once so close that they both had “Friends Forever” tattooed on their shoulders

But something soured between the two cousins early Saturday morning. And what started as an argument over money ended with 21-year-old Lively dead outside McCullen’s trailer.
Deputies charged Willard “Joey” McCullen, 22, of 8401 Bowles Road, Lot 20, with his murder.

Around 1:30 a.m. Saturday, Lillian Lively said she stood on the steps between her nephew and her son. They had been arguing, she said, over money McCullen had borrowed from her.

McCullen reached over her shoulder with a .25-caliber handgun and fired a bullet into her son’s back.

“He turned around and looked at Joey, and Joey shot him in the chest,” she said. “He died instantly. I was laying on my son, crying, asking him to wake up.”

Then Lillian Lively closed Devin’s eyes and called 911.

A few doors down, Richard Hitchcock, 40, said he heard McCullen and his 3-year-old son walking outside. He invited them into his trailer. But after McCullen told him he’d shot someone, Hitchcock told him to leave.

Deputies soon arrived at the door with rifles. “They told him several times to put his boy down,” Hitchcock said. Eventually, McCullen complied and deputies apprehended him.

Sheriff’s spokesman J.D. Callaway said the argument may have turned physical before the shooting. But deputies released few details Saturday. “It’s a closed case,” he said.

McCullen is charged with second degree murder. He was being held in the Orient Road Jail without bail this morning.

(Photo of Willard Joseph McCullen Jr., courtesy of the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office)

-- Catherine E. Shoichet, Times Staff Writer