A couple planned a new chapter in St. Petersburg. A homicide changed everything.

ST. PETERSBURG — After living apart for more than a year, St. Petersburg was supposed to be the place where Tim Pustelak and his partner reunited.

Pustelak, 49, moved to Florida from Pennsylvania in late 2022 for a job. Shannon Colussi wasn’t ready to leave hers, so she stayed behind and visited once a month.

The region’s sun and sand were a balm for a couple weary of mid-Atlantic weather. They browsed the vendor stands at the St. Pete Pier, waded at Spa Beach and took Colussi’s labradoodle Cole to romp at Fort DeSoto. They tried a new restaurant every time they went out.

Earlier this year, Colussi, a food and beverage manager for a hotel chain, sold her house and planned to begin the trip to St. Petersburg the day after Easter.

“I was supposed to drive down on the 1st and start our next chapter of life together,” she said.

They talked on Easter Sunday. When Colussi couldn’t reach Pustelak by the next afternoon, she got worried and called police.

What officers found when they entered Pustelak’s apartment has burdened his loved ones with grief and confusion. Who would do that to a jokester who tried to make friends wherever he went. And why?

Some answers came about a week later, when police arrested a suspect on a murder charge. But key questions remain.

So, too, do thoughts of what might have been.

“He just wanted people to smile”

Colussi and Pustelak were a couple for five years, but they’d known each for much longer.

Colussi, 53, grew up a few miles from Pustelak’s family in Girard, Pa., a small town near Erie. He and Colussi went to grade school together.

The youngest of three siblings, Pustelak was the product of a tightknit family, said his older brother Gary Pustelak, who lives in Girard. He called their mother and father, Audrey and Bill, “the best parents in the world.”

Tim graduated in 1993 from an all-boys Catholic high school, where he was on the cheerleading squad and excelled at math. After high school, Pustelak spent years racing supercross. The family owned a motorcycle and powersport dealership in Erie called Cycle City for nearly three decades.

After twice breaking his neck in crashes, Pustelak joined the family’s masonry contracting business, drawing up bids and doing other administrative work. He married, had two children, divorced and later had a third child. They’re now 19, 17 and 13.

Pustelak and Colussi reconnected in 2018 when she commented on one of his Facebook posts and suggested he visit her at the restaurant where she worked. He did. They met later and caught up as they walked along Lake Erie. She was drawn to his spiky blond hair, blue eyes, goofy energy and caring nature.

“He just wanted people to smile and be happy,” Colussi said. “He’d talk to you for five minutes in the gas station and you’d be his new best friend.”

Their personalities were like “yin and yang,” Colussi said. Working in the hospitality business, she had to be “on” all the time during her shift and tended to be reserved outside of work. Pustelak helped bring her out of her shell, reminding her, as he put it, that “you still need to live your life.”

“I’d bring him down two notches and he’d bring me up two, and we met in the middle,” she said.

His affable nature helped land the job that brought him to Florida. In 2020, the couple went to Buffalo, New York for the night. The Buffalo Bills game was on the television at the hotel bar but Pustelak wanted to check on the Green Bay Packers game. He convinced other guests to change the channel.

A man at the bar who owned a Florida-based building restoration company was impressed, figuring a guy who could do that would make a good salesman, Colussi recalled.

Pustelak and the owner kept in touch and in late 2022 he hired Pustelak as a customer service manager. He moved to Punta Gorda but found the area too pricey and sedate, Colussi said. They wanted a vibrant place close to the water, so Colussi suggested St. Petersburg and found an apartment in the Pinellas Point area.

There were hiccups as Pustelak, who was used to leaving car and home doors unlocked, adjusted to city life, Colussi said. His car was stolen last summer.

Gary Pustelak said his brother’s kindness was admirable but sometimes baffling.

“Tim puts everyone in one bucket: I love them all, they all love me,” he said.

Gary worried that attitude made his brother vulnerable and he was apprehensive when Tim moved. Their father, who died in 2018, had given his eldest son a directive: “Gary, no matter what, when I go, take care of your brother.”

Now that would be harder.

“I knew I was losing a tight connection, a pulse of what’s going on,” he said.

An argument, then a stabbing

In February, Pustelak moved to the Marisol Vista Apartments near Gandy Boulevard and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Street. By then, he’d switched jobs, becoming a sales director for a trash container rental company. He also worked a part-time early morning shift at FedEx.

As Easter approached, the couple talked about Pustelak returning to Pennsylvania for a holiday visit, but he’d just started the new job and airfare was pricey, Colussi said.

They talked by phone on Easter Sunday. Pustelak was tired. Colussi suggested he rest before his FedEx shift the next morning. She told him she loved him.

When she couldn’t reach him by the next afternoon, she called police.

About 7:40 p.m. on April 1, officers went to Pustelak’s apartment and found his body on the floor, riddled with stab wounds.

Eight days later, police arrested Jovante Darling, 31, on a second-degree murder charge. A police news release said Pustelak and Darling knew each other and “had an argument that led to the murder.”

Investigators found a bloody handprint on the wall of Pustelak’s bedroom “where this incident is believed to have started,” according to an arrest affidavit. A fingerprint matched Darling’s.

The affidavit doesn’t mention a motive. Police spokesperson Yolanda Fernandez said Darling had stayed with Pustelak for a few days and that Pustelak had been trying to help him get a job. Fernandez said police aren’t ready to share more about what led to the violence.

Darling was appointed a public defender and has pleaded not guilty. He was being held in the county jail without bond.

Darling made headlines in January 2011 after his girlfriend was fatally shot in the bedroom of a Clearwater home. The shooting was deemed accidental, but Darling pleaded guilty to illegally possessing a firearm as a felon and received a 15-year prison sentence. He was released in 2021, then violated a court-imposed curfew and was sentenced to another 13 months.

Darling was arrested again in December. Pinellas prosecutors dropped some charges, but he still faces charges of drug and drug paraphernalia possession, illegally possessing a firearm and resisting an officer without violence. He has pleaded not guilty.

Signs of trouble, changed plans

Pustelak’s family and friends wonder about the connection between the two men.

Gary Pustelak said he’d started to worry about his brother in the weeks before his death. Tim had stopped calling and kept in touch only through text messages. After his death, one of his closest friends told Gary he’d flown to Florida to visit Tim, but Tim didn’t invite him over to his apartment and despite promises to meet with him, never did. The friend said he got the sense that Tim was hanging out with the wrong crowd.

Gary Pustelak keeps thinking about his father’s request.

“I tried my hardest, and I feel like I failed my dad and I failed my brother,” he said, choking up. He said he’s been buoyed, though, by stories people have shared about how his brother helped them over the years.

Colussi said she doesn’t recognize Darling’s name or face, but she was also worried Pustelak had befriended some problematic people. She said Darling’s arrest has provided some closure, but she is wrestling with what she calls “the what-ifs.” What if Tim had come home for Easter after all? What if she’d made it to St. Petersburg by Easter Sunday?

As for her plans, everything has changed.

On the early April day when she first spoke to the Tampa Bay Times, it was 40 degrees and dreary in Girard and the forecast called for wet snow. As much as she loves St. Petersburg, though, there’s no point in moving. She recently lost her father and is staying with her mother in Girard. Her mom could use the help and Colussi could use the companionship and feeling of security.

Colussi previously taught third grade and is thinking about returning to the field. She figures it’s a good way to bring positivity to the world like Pustelak did while following his advice: You still need to live your life.