Published Aug. 15|Updated Aug. 15
About the time that a semitruck slammed into a group of people outside the Emperors Gentlemen’s Club early Tuesday, killing one and injuring two others, the man said to be the driver sent a text message to a childhood friend.
“Goodbye,” wrote Dylan Fogle, according to an arrest report. “I’m going to prison for vehicular manslaughter.”
That was among the new details made public Thursday after police announced they’d arrested Fogle in the deadly collision. It happened after what detectives described as a “disturbance” inside the adult club involving Fogle and another man described as a friend of his. The friend, identified in court records as Anthony Matelsky, was not arrested.
Police identified the man who was killed as Giovanni Soto, 44.
Fogle, 25, of North Carolina was hospitalized before being jailed on charges of first-degree murder, attempted murder, vehicular homicide, DUI manslaughter and DUI with serious bodily injury.
He was stumbling and showed other signs of being impaired by alcohol, police said, when officers arrived a little before 4:30 a.m. outside the club at 5718 E. Adamo Drive.
Detectives interviewed the club’s dancers and bouncers. Fogle and Matelsky were drinking together, according to the witnesses. Earlier that morning, one of the dancers said Fogle tried to touch her inappropriately, the arrest report states. He was kicked out.
Matelsky remained inside, according to the report. The same woman said she was later dancing for Matelsky when he also began behaving inappropriately, the report states. Security escorted him outside, too.
The club’s surveillance video showed Matelsky being “physically confrontational” with the staff outside, the report states. At one point, someone pushed him. He fell to his back, got back up and continued confronting the group. It was then that the semitruck rolled forward into the group.
Three people, including Soto, were hit.
Soto died at the scene. The other two men, identified as Joshua Sanders, 45, and Stephen Tyler, 35, were hospitalized with serious injuries.
Sanders told the Tampa Bay Times he was blindsided by the semitruck, which fractured his spine and one of his legs.
“I didn’t see it,” he said.
Sanders was released from the hospital Wednesday but was told he will need to complete eight weeks of physical therapy.
Tampa lawyer Jeff Murphy, who is representing both Sanders and Tyler, said he didn’t know the specifics of their injuries. He said one of Tyler’s arms was in a cast Thursday.
Moments after the collision, the video showed the truck’s driver door open. Several unidentified people pulled Fogle out and beat him, the report states.
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Explore all your optionsThe truck, a 2019 Peterbilt tractor-trailer cab, was operated by Mule Team, a Tennessee-based company, according to the report. The company told police they’d reviewed the truck’s onboard camera, which showed it sitting on the parking lot’s south side for about one minute and 35 seconds before it was driven toward the group.
The truck crashed at the northern edge of the parking lot near the club’s loading dock area.
Angelise Ortiz, Fogle’s childhood friend who told police about his text message, said he’d called her six times a little after 4 a.m., the report states. She sent a text message asking if he was OK before he texted back the statement about going to prison. He then texted two photos showing the inside of the semitruck’s cab, the report states.
“It was a very humbling thing to be someone’s last call,” Ortiz told the Tampa Bay Times during an interview on Thursday. “I don’t believe that he planned on surviving it.”
Ortiz and Fogle have been friends since they were 10 years old, she said. He’d expressed a passion for driving semitrucks as long as Ortiz could remember. The trucking gig that brought Fogle to Tampa was his “dream job,” she added.
Fogle was never violent when he drank, she said. And he wasn’t a regular at Emperors.
“I think that alcohol definitely got the best of him that night,” Ortiz said.
Ortiz said Matelsky was a bad influence on Fogle.
“This was not something that I would expect from him. I know he tended to be on the wild side, but I would have never in a million years thought he would go through with something like that,” she said. “It wasn’t a shock to me that he did this while hanging out with his friend. That part was not a surprise.”
Matelsky could not immediately be reached for comment at several numbers listed under his name Thursday.
Another witness, described as Fogle’s co-worker, said she called him before the collision to ask if he knew where Matelsky was, the report states. She said he told her he’d been involved in a disturbance in the club and that his tooth had been chipped.
Fogle was hospitalized before being moved to jail. His blood alcohol content was above the 0.08 limit at which Florida law says someone is impaired, police said, but the exact amount was not included in the records released Thursday.
When detectives interviewed Fogle at the hospital, he said he was in the parking lot waiting to pick up Matelsky and saw the group confronting his friend. He drove forward, he said, but claimed the accelerator got stuck. When police asked why he didn’t steer away from the crowd, he could not provide a valid answer, the report states.
Police previously said during a news conference that Fogle “lied in wait” for about a half-hour before he saw a person with whom he had argued exit the club.
Neither the person who was killed nor the two people injured were the intended target, police said. The three were patrons and not employees.
Soto, who was killed in the crash, had graduated Tampa Bay Technical High School about 10 years ago and owned a mechanic shop in Tampa, his family said.
Miguel A. Soto, his father, said he loved working on cars with his son. If one of his two brothers needed help fixing their cars, money or advice, Soto was always there for them, their father said.
Soto was also an attentive father, his 16-year-old daughter said.
Jazlyne Soto remembers his goofy attitude and their frequent fishing trips. She’ll miss his presence most, she said.
“He was always just a call away,” his daughter said. “He put me first, and everybody else came second.”
